


never ending math equation

by liquidmeasure



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Drinking, M/M, Oral Sex, Penguins, Recreational Drug Use, Seals (Animals), Sloppy Makeouts, Workplace Relationship, shades of narry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 17:38:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4531032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquidmeasure/pseuds/liquidmeasure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Niall’s told him all about the winter. The way the snow creeps in through the cracks. The way the winds make you feel like the entire continent will be ripped up and away and tossed into the void. But that’s the bad days. Niall says on the good days, everything is still, save for the ice, and the stars flash like strobe lights and if you look up, you can see everything. You can see right through the universe.</i><br/><i>So that’s something to look forward to.</i> </p><p> </p><p>Or...Louis does science, Zayn is an enigma, Harry studies penguin poop and Niall fixes radios. Nobody knows how they feel, but Zayn knows how everyone feels.</p><p>For an office AU hate-to-lust prompt that i took a few (read: lots of) liberties with. It's sort of an office, it's just an office in Antarctica!</p><p>(note: the title isn't a typo, I know that "neverending" is generally one word or hyphenated, but that is literally the title of the song I named it after. blame Modest Mouse.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	never ending math equation

**Author's Note:**

> This whole thing started with me wanting to write something about entanglement, because I love that stuff and I couldn't stop thinking about Niall saying "spooky action at a distance". Then I listened to a podcast about [entanglement](http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510307/invisibilia) and mirror-touch synesthesia. Everything I know about Antarctica comes from conversations with friends who have been there and not been there, and from watching Encounters At the End Of The World multiple times, so if this is too weird, you can blame Werner Herzog.  
> Also my science is probably dubious and terrible and most of what Louis has going on the lab is probably actually impossible so let's just call this sci-fi ok? Ok.  
> (Title is from the Modest Mouse song, which is on Building Nothing Out Of Something...you should listen to that whole album it's very on the nose)

The important thing is that he’s got his tea. Proper Yorkshire tea courtesy of his mum, with photos of the twins stuck on the side of the tea box for good measure and a roll of Polos so if he closes his eyes and inhales deeply and just sort of shuts everything out he can almost imagine he’s home. He can forget where he is and what he’s doing and he can ignore the fact that it’s fucking freezing and the new lab tech hates him.

It’s really stupid, the thing about the cold, because he should have expected it, right? It’s the coldest place on earth. This is like…IT. But he hadn’t considered that the heating system in the station would be so dodgy, eternally vacillating between inadequate and excessive so he’s sweating through his tee shirt one minute and the next he’s got a scarf wrapped around his entire head trying to keep the chill out.

He holds his mug in two hands and observes through a narrow gap in the knit, just wide enough to see. He probably looks ridiculous. He probably did it on purpose. He’s just trying to get a reaction out of this guy maybe. Trying to make him laugh or smile or ask a question. _Why’ve you got that stupid scarf on your head?_ Louis thinks it’s weird. It’s weird that he’s not said anything, beyond terse questions about the code or bits of system diagnostics.

It’s like…they’re stuck here. Together. They could at least like…have a chat. God knows Louis has tried. He talked incessantly the first day, asking nervous questions, describing the experiment, but all he’d gotten for his trouble were a few monosyllabic grunts. A dismissive shrug. The second day, the guy had shown up with an iPod (one of the old ones with the spinning wheel and everything, cracked down the front) and a pair of earbuds and that was that. When they’re not actively inputting into the relay, it’s like he’s off in another world.

Louis shouldn’t be surprised. He called it, didn’t he, the day the plane arrived full to the brim with Yorkshire Tea and those weird sausages Niall loves and _fresh_ meat as well: a gaggle of new research assistants, all wearing the same face. Louis remembers that face: wide-eyed, awe-struck. He remembers how it felt, when he arrived. It’s impressive and overwhelming at first. The beauty and the silence and the way everything is white white white in every direction.

Then the Terra Bus rolls up to the station and out the window you see the mud and the detritus and the scaffolding and the bulldozers and it’s loud and ugly, like someone took a knife and cut right into the breastbone of heaven and exposed all the ugliness underneath and there you go, that’s where you’ll be living.

He’d noticed Zayn right away because he wasn’t wearing the face. Or maybe his face was different. Firstly he was like... _ridiculously_ good looking—like he’d gotten on the wrong plane and was meant to be arriving at some arctic outdoorsy Sports Illustrated calendar shoot—but that wasn’t the only thing. It was his expression. Soft. Apprehensive, but also like…relieved? Like someone who’d just arrived safely home after a long journey, or who’d just gotten to high ground after a flash flood.

Louis taps a few keys and runs a report. Checks his watch. He’s gotten used to that lately, the watch. The weight of it on his wrist was strange at first, unfamiliar the way this place was unfamiliar, but he’s becoming accustomed to reading the hands. He still fumbles for his pocket 5 times out of 10, looking for a phone that’s not there. For the first couple weeks, he’d actually kept it charged, on his person, like a little touchstone. Something tethering him to his real life back home, but it’s next to useless down here. Even _if_ the antenna worked, he’d have to keep it turned off. It’s like he’s had to wean himself off of it, off the tiny rituals he’d never had any reason to question or consider before he arrived here. Checking the time, refreshing his notifications, putting it on the charger every night before bed.

It’s back in his room now, a dead bit of metal and plastic tucked in the back of a drawer. He’s got new rituals now, which makes sense. When you arrive at McMurdo, it’s like you shed the clutter of your daily life, the habits and the trappings you never even recognized until they had no use anymore. Everything down here is so expansive and bare, like a blank slate. Like negative space. Everything is high contrast. Sometimes it’s like he’s watching his own life under a microscope. Little habits become large and ritualistic: walk the hallways at night, visit the commissary. Candy bar, cup of tea, cigarette. Ice cream from the Mr. Frosty in the cafeteria. He wonders if he’s putting on weight down here. That’s not a thing he ever would’ve expected…

He looks up at Zayn, who’s fiddling with some cords and marking things down on his clipboard. He’s frowning in a not-unpleasant sort of way; not the way he frowns at Louis, which is strange and sharp and loaded with something Louis cannot for the life of him comprehend. Louis holds his mug in one hand and raises the other, snapping in the air.

“Oi! Zayn!”

Zayn tugs one of his earbuds out and Louis can just make out a melody. A tiny, tinny noise moving through the air between them. He listens for a moment, tries to suss out what it is—what does Zayn listen to?—then he points at his computer screen and takes a sip of his tea.

Zayn watches him, his face maddeningly neutral, then he nods. Louis holds the tea in his mouth. He swallows and Zayn’s expression turns strange, like he’s grossed out. Like Louis disgusts him. He brushes his collarbone with two fingers and clears his throat, like he’s got something stuck in there, and Louis sets his tea deliberately down on the table. Frowns at his computer. Christ. He can’t even drink his tea in peace without being fucking indicted by this prick. He checks his watch, raises one hand and waits.

“Set.”

He hears Zayn shuffling around at the other end of the room, then his voice, soft and deep, like something you could wrap yourself up in. Louis would like to hear more of it, if he would just bloody _say _som— _ugh_. God. No, shut up. He’s got to like…wipe his brain of that sort of shit. Yeah, it’s fucking lonely out here and yeah, Zayn is stupidly good-looking but it’s just like he told Niall in the mess hall last week, Zayn’s clearly a honey trap. A beautiful view masking a treacherous drop. And anyway, they’re co-workers and _anyway_ Zayn clearly hates him so—__

“Set. Mark. Initiating in three, two, one…”

This is all Niall’s fault, honestly. Niall and the cruel unusual universe.

* * *

 

When the plane came in, it was like Christmas morning. It’s always Christmas morning when the plane comes in. Or like visiting day in a penitentiary. They each get a small touch of home. A fleeting feeling of belonging transmitted through tea boxes and wool socks and sausage and particular strange brands of toothpaste. And there’s the people, who are not like home at all, save for the newness of them, the sense that they’ve been transplanted, that they haven’t been absorbed by this place yet. Haven’t lost themselves in the whiteout.

The first they really saw of the new ones was in the cafeteria at lunch time. They filed in nervously and stuck together in little groups and spoke quietly, like they weren’t sure how to occupy this new space. Louis remembered that. Remembered feeling lost. Some of them found long-lost friends and hugged it out and laughed and started right in talking shop. Found their comfort zone, something familiar. Louis didn’t know anyone this time around, just like he didn’t know anyone when he arrived here at the station six months ago. When he was new. Fresh. Alone. When Niall had heard his accent and sat himself down across the table from Louis and said, “You’re a Brit! Not Irish but fuck, I’ll take what I can get out here.”

Niall had someone this time, though. A Harry something. This tall lanky fellow with like a mile of hair and a face that seemed to shift and change as you looked at him, soft like a cherub one moment and all angles and planes the next. The entirety of him was slow and deliberate and the whole of Niall was constant frenetic motion and it was funny seeing the two of them interact, like they were playing at the same game in two totally different ways.

“Harry Styles.” He held his hand out for Louis to shake and smiled in this very easy sort of way. Genuine and loose. It made Louis self-conscious about his own face (Louis has never been unwound the way Harry seems to be. He doesn’t know how to be that. Louis is all sharp edges and pokey bits). He’d smiled tightly and shook Harry’s hand and said

“Pleasure.”

And then Harry turned to Niall and clutched at his own arms and said “It’s fucking FREEZING down here, Nialler.”

Niall sat down next to Harry and snatched a triangle of toast off Louis’ plate, popped it in his mouth before Louis could protest and talked around it.

“It’s the bottom of the world, Harry, I told you it was going to be cold. Anyway, this is Louis. The one I told you about.” He swallowed. “Louis is into the physics stuff.”

Harry nodded and made an “aha” sort of face that set Louis wondering what exactly Niall had said.  

“The physics stuff.” Harry gestured upward, toward the ceiling. “Like space stuff?” He glanced over at Niall again. “Wicked.”

“Eeeh…” Louis wrinkled his nose, “...not quite. In a roundabout way, I suppose. I’m more studying the small stuff. The little bits. Not the same kind of physics as planets and stars and such.”

Niall waved his hands around mysteriously.

“Louis is studying spooky action at a distance.”

“Huh?” Harry looked lost.

“Einstein? Particles?”

Harry shook his head. Niall rolled his eyes.

“You’ve got to get your head out of your own ass sometime and like…expand your horizons, Harry.”

“But there’s so much to learn up your own ass.”

Niall looked acquiescent.

“True.” He smiled over at Louis and angled his head in Harry’s direction. “Harry’s gonna be studying shit.”

Harry had just nodded serenely, like he was accustomed to Niall’s whole…way of being.

“I’ll be working with seal waste, and penguins…um…but like…not exactly that. I’m not studying the uh…I’m studying little bits too, like you. Microbes that make their home in the…”

“In the shit.” Niall supplied helpfully.

“Yeah. In the shit.”

“Anyway, Louis is doing stuff with quantum mechanics. Entanglement. That sort of thing.”

“Oooooh! Okay so like the whole split particle thing? That _is_ wicked.”

Louis took a bite of his powdered eggs and shrugged.

“Well, it’s not nearly as exciting as poop. Bit boring, actually. We’re working with a team in Rothera on practical applications of quantum entanglement? Sending intact packets of information instantly across large distances.”

“They’re building a space walkie-talkie, Haz. A tin-can telephone that works across light years.”

Louis winced.

“It’s a little more than—Niall, that’s like a gross oversimplification of my work and yours. It’s like…” He looked around the table then for something to illustrate the concept. Settled on a half-stale dinner roll off of Niall’s plate. “Like, so you can split a single particle in two, right?” He tugged at the roll, splitting it roughly down the middle, ignoring Niall’s protests. “And what you’d expect to get is two halves? But like...in practice, what you gets is two particles that are identical, but mirror images of each other.”

“Identical like…clones? Like twins?”

“Sort of. More like literally the same particle occupying two points in space.”

Harry looked a little lost. Niall had heard it all before and was shaking his head.

“Don’t try to get it, mate, it’s not…you can’t wrap your mind around it, not proper like.”

It was always frustrating, the explaining. Louis had a hard time conceiving of it himself and he knew the maths.

“We know they’re the same because they act the same. You can split a particle, and move one of the pair to the next room and any measurement you make on one side will be duplicated in the other simultaneously. But…more than that it’s like…do you know Schroedinger’s Cat?”

Harry nodded, his eyes lighting up. “I know that one. The cat in the box, right? With the alive and dead.”

“Yeah. So, there wasn’t actually a cat, it was a thought experiment that was meant to illustrate how a wave collapses when you measure it. The idea that observing a thing is what makes it absolute. As long as the box is sealed and the results aren’t being observed, the cat is existing in every possible state at once. Alive and dead at the same time. So like…the idea is that when we’re not measuring the state of given particle, it’s existing at every possible point in space. It’s not a particle when you’re not looking, it’s a wave. It’s like...made of possibility. It’s the measurement that pins it down.”

“That…”

“Makes no sense.” Niall laughed and retrieved his roll off the table. “I told you, Harry, don’t try to understand it, you’ll go mental. Anyway, that’s all irrelevant, right? The point is that anything that happens in one room is instantly duplicated in the other, with no actual transfer of information. It’s like one half just _knows_ what the other is doing. As it happens.”

Louis had given up then. He’d just pointed at Niall and said “There you go,” and gone back to his lunch.

“Listen, Haz, it’s fucking huge, though, right? There’s literally no data being sent. It’s not a transmission, it’s just…existence. So like, if you can translate that into something bigger, you’ve got the potential for the perfect radio. A totally lossless form of communication over near infinite distances.”

“In theory,” Louis sighed.

“In theory.”

“Anyway,” it was depressing, thinking about it, the futility of their effort. “It’s all been a big wash so far. It’s less like a walkie-talkie and more like...emailing into the void at this point.”

“Huh.” Harry nodded, thoughtful. “So like space-spam or something.”

Louis had felt the rightness of that in his bones. The depressing truth of what Harry had said. An endless stream of data, tossed into the ether. It doesn’t matter what you send out, you’ll not get an answer.

“Yeah. Exactly. So far it just...gets lost. Something about the sizing up...working with more than a single particle. We don’t know.”

Niall looked around the room then, scanning the crowd.

“Which one is it then?”

“Which what?”

“You’re getting a new lab tech, right? Jade’s heading to Rothera?”

“Yeah uh…” He’d not thought of it really but yeah, he’d be working with one of them soon. Fresh meat. “I’m not sure, actually. I didn’t think to—“

“You’ve no idea?” Niall scanned the room again. “Jesus, what if it’s someone terrible? What if they’ve got like…a weird habit or—“

“God, Niall. Please don’t jinx me, I’ve got to spend all my time with this person.”

“What if they’re like… _stupidly_ good looking? OH MY GOD—“ Niall looked suddenly like he’d thought of something life-altering. “Did you see the one with the glasses earlier when they all came in off the terror bus?”

Louis just stared down at his plate, self-conscious. The one with the glasses. He was talking about the one with the face. The one Louis had been trying _not_ to notice all morning. The one absolutely made of red flags. Louis just poked at his eggs and tried to sound disinterested.

“Dunno. What about him?”

“Didn’t say it was a him, did I?” He’d looked up then and caught Niall smiling wickedly. “So you did see him, then? What if he’s the one?”

“What about it?”

Niall had scoffed, like he wasn’t impressed with Louis’ act.

“Working in a lab day in day out with THAT? You’re telling me you’re not even a little thrilled? He’s from Cambridge too, yeah? You’ve got a lot in common, what if you start some sort of illicit romance? Late night sciencey trysts? Dangerous liaisons? _Romantic entanglement_?”

“Oh my god, Niall.” Louis just stared down at his plate. “Why do I sit with you?”

“Because I’m good company and I’ve got pretty eyes. Come on. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t go there, he’s like—“

Louis just wanted him to stop. Honestly, it was the last conversation he was interested in having, but he understands now that Niall is either a hopeless romantic or a sadist because it seems he won’t rest until _someone_ down here finds their soulmate. It’s how he copes with the isolation maybe, the loneliness of the arctic sprawl. Louis gets that, but it’s a right fucking bother when Niall turns his love-lens on Louis. Like no matter how many times he says it, Niall won’t accept that Louis is here to get away from all that. To just…take a time out. Anyway he’s been too busy, too stressed, wound up too tight by all the failure and the monotony of the lab, and he wasn’t in the mood that morning. He and Jade had been working overtime, going over the code, checking the wiring, but it had borne no fruit and they’d both ended up tired and irritable and tense and then there was Niall, poking and prodding and Louis had just waved his hand sharply and said

“Look—I’ve already _been_ there, ok? I’m not interested…”

“WHAT?”

Niall dropped his fork, his face a mask of shock, and when Louis looked up, Harry was staring at him too, eyes wide as saucers. For a moment, Louis couldn’t figure out what they were on about, and that put him on the defensive.  

“What?”

Harry looked spun around.

“You and Zayn?”

His first thought was _his name is Zayn_. Then it dawned on him that he’d probably just said something very confusing. He was just…tired. And he wasn’t in the mood for the “would you” game. He opened his mouth to speak again just as a voice rang out from across the room.

“STYLES. Harry Styles.”

Harry rearranged his face and leapt up, giving Niall a quick wide-eyed glance, and hurried across the room. Louis watched him go, his mouth hanging open on the edge of an explanation. Then he turned back to Niall, who still looked aghast.

“I thought you didn’t know anyone on the boat,” he hissed.

“I don’t! I didn’t mean—“

“You don’t know anyone, you’ve just _slept_ with one of them? Alright, you fucking weirdo.”

Louis buried his face in his hands.

“Jesus christ. Why are we even—I haven’t slept with anyone. What I meant was like…I know his _type_. Like…been there done that or whatever.”

Niall shut his mouth and leaned back. He still looked uncertain. Curious.

“What d’you even mean, his type? You’ve not even properly met him.”

Louis rolled his eyes.

“You’ve seen him, Niall. Broody, floppy hair, hipster-chic ‘i just grabbed these off the rack’ glasses, parka straight out of military surplus. Probably doesn’t talk much. Fuckin’ mysterious arty bad boy, acts oblivious to his own like--” he’d gestured vaguely at his own head “--face…situation. I know all about those ones, ok? They always know how good-looking they are, they know exactly what they’re doing. It’s always calculated, and they always fuck off in the end and leave you high and dry.”

Niall just watched him as he spoke, his smile widening slowly. Louis wanted to smack him for it.

“Wow, Lou,” he laughed. “That is some crackerjack objective analysis. You must be a real whiz in the lab, lookin’ at the evidence, makin’ conclusions. A regular Epicurus over here.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“I’m just playing, you dick. But yeah like…I’m an engineer not a psychologist, but I’m pretty sure there’s a word for that. Starts with a P, ends with ‘rojection’. Honestly, now I hope it’s him. Can’t _wait_ to see how that goes.”

“If it’s him, I’m blaming you.”

“If it’s him, you can blame me for whatever you please, just like…invite me down to the lab sometime, yeah? Do me a solid.”

“That’s very definitely not happening.”

 

* * *

 

He’s thinking of it as they run the next cycle, two hours later. That it’s Niall’s fault. It’s like that book, The Secret or whatever. You imagine a thing and you put a vibe out into the universe and the universe is like “fuck you, asshole, take that”.

Maybe that’s not what the book is about. He’s never read it. Why would he read it? It’s rubbish. You can’t just send a message out into the ether and expect an answer back, he’s all but proven that here, hasn’t he? He taps at the keyboard, composing a message. It doesn’t matter what he writes, Jade won’t receive it at Rothera. There was a script at first, set phrases they were meant to stick to, but they’ve been running tests and tweaking algorithms and altering code for months and not one byte of data has come through intact so now he just inputs nonsense.

_Fucking yorkshire tea._

_Niall is an arse._

_The fuck is Zayn looking at?_

_Is that Sonic Youth?_

_What a prick._

_Please talk to me I’m dying._

Single sentences. Isolated thoughts. Bits of himself, thrown out into the void. 

He looks up from the keyboard and over at Zayn, who’s bent over the table across the room, staring down at his clipboard. He’s wearing a Joy Division shirt. Louis has the same one and he wants to say something, but Zayn is as reticent as ever, his entire being broadcasting inaccessibility. He’s tapping his pen on the page in time with a beat Louis can’t hear and sort of sucking at his cheeks, and it makes him look a little like a beautiful fish. Louis looks back at the computer.

_Nice cheekbones._

He hits enter and queues the sequence. Raises one hand.

“Zayn.”

Zayn doesn’t even look up, he just glances at his watch and tugs his earbuds out. Checks a few cords and a few lines of code, then waits. Louis types a command.

“Set.”

Zayn punches a button with his thumb.

“Mark. Initiating in three…two…one…”

* * *

 

“Maybe you’re putting off a vibe.”

Louis nearly chokes on his beer.

“Me?? He’s the one who--I’ve been nothing but friendly. Or I was in the beginning. I’ve sort of given up at this point. I just…don’t try anymore, you know? If this is the way he wants to be, that’s…whatever.”

Niall laughs.

“That sounds horribly awkward.”

He sets his beer down next to his chair and strums a few chords on the guitar in his lap. He’s got the electric today, with the amplifier hooked up and pointed out at the vast expanse in front of them. It’s getting whiter out there, more uniform. More like Antarctica is meant to look. Winter is coming, and the nights are getting longer, like properly dark.

The noise of the guitar moves out and over the tundra and echoes off the ice and it sounds otherworldly. Louis wonders how far it will get. The air is so thin here and there’s so little interference. He wonders if they could hear it all the way at Rothera, closes his eyes and imagines a wave, moving out of the amp and over the ice and through the air all the way home. Niall takes his beer off the ground and drinks, then runs the bottle down the strings. It sounds like an electric whine, then a ping.

“I’ve been trying for the sounds they make under the ice. The seals.”

Louis laughs.

“Good luck with that. You need like a complicated synthesizer.” He considers. “Or an orchestra.”

“Have you heard them, though, in person? It’s like Pink Floyd stuff. I’d like to record them. It’s wild.”

“I’ve not heard them myself, no. They won’t let me leave the base, you know that.”

“You’ve got to come out with me, Lou. You’ve got to do the training. Just like…make sure you get to it before the daylight’s gone, you know?”

Louis smiles and drinks his beer and thinks of all the different sounds the world makes. Seals under the ice, barking and whining and making noises that sound like lasers in an intergalactic war. He thinks of the way the ice groans and cracks. The way it moves. He comes outside sometimes, at night. He stands there and smokes a cigarette and he looks out over the snow and he thinks “I’m more alone than anyone on earth” and then he’ll hear footsteps behind him and he’ll turn, but it’s just the ice. Like it wants him to know that alone isn’t a thing. That everything is alive just under his feet. That he’s a part of it and he’s come from it and it will swallow him back up someday.

Things are weird like that here. Things feel big and small at the same time. Everything feels desolate and isolated but it’s all connected. Communicating. The seals are transmitting to each other through the water, the penguins follow invisible leylines, Louis is in his lab sending messages into the void, sending silent transmissions across the room ( _talk to me, why are you being such a dick? don’t look at me like that._ ) the planet is getting warmer and the ice is melting and cracking and shifting and sending bits of itself Northward like an SOS and the world is answering back in its way. A morse code of oil drilling and holes poked in the ozone layer, smoke signals of carbon gas. _You’re on your own._

Niall plays a few more chords and pauses.

“Maybe he’s heard some kind of terrible rumor about you. Did you do anything really horrid while you were back at Cambridge?”

Louis finishes his beer and drops the bottle on the ground beside his chair.

“Yeah. I did plenty.”

Niall raises his eyebrows.

“That’s not it though. I don’t know.”

“Have you considered asking him?”

Louis makes a sour face.

“Jesus, of course not. What am I supposed to say? ‘I’d like you to be nicer to me’?”

“Dunno. Might be worth a try.”

“Niall, I would honestly rather peel my entire face off.”

“Fair enough. Anyway, Zayn-schmayn, right? Let’s go inside, I’ve got a present for you.”

* * *

 

He can’t sleep, and his head hurts despite the paracetamol he’s taken--which is called tylenol here because this place is unbearably American--so he sits upright on his bed staring down at his laptop. Works his way through his email for the first time in two week. Faculty notes from uni, archived. A video from his mum. Two emails from Troy. He considers reading them. Opens the first and sees _“Your mum told me about Eleanor and I’m...”_ and then hits the little trash bin at the top of the window. Tries not to think badly of his mother. It’s not her fault if he makes himself a nuisance. None of it is her fault.

He tugs his copy of the Feynman Lectures off his desk and the little baggie Niall gave him out of his parka and sets about rolling a joint, pulling the buds apart and separating the stems, moving the bits around and sprinkling them over the paper. Niall is a saint, honestly. And a criminal, probably. Louis’ not sure how much trouble they would all be in if they were caught, but no one gets caught down here. It’s like a continent full of blind eyes. The only rules that anyone really subscribes to are the ones meant to keep you alive.

He pops the joint into his mouth and clicks a link. A video plays. The twins, sitting in high chairs side by side. Louis can see the clutter and glow of his mum’s kitchen behind them. Can hear her in the background, talking to them, asking them questions. They answer back in babbles, not using proper words. It’s unintelligible but it has the rhythm and cadence of speech, like they’re using a language Louis doesn’t understand. It’s eerie sometimes, the way they interact. The way they mirror each other. They’re like two halves of a whole, exchanging information through invisible channels Louis can’t fathom. He lights the joint and smokes, holding the lid of a jar in one hand to catch any stray ash. It’s stupid, smoking in bed. He could burn down the whole station. He could burn down the whole South Pole.

The twins finish dancing to a song, their motions synced up in a creepy-cute sort of way, and then the camera spins dizzyingly and there’s his mum, smiling and waving. Louis gives a small wave back at the screen and exhales.

“Miss you.”

He shuts the computer. Stubs out the end of the roach and leans back on the bed.

He runs his hands over his face and stays very still for a minute or two and lets the weed take the edge off. He can feel it working at him, softening his sharper parts, making it a little easier, the being alone. He’s never been good at it, but that’s why he’s here, isn’t it? Why he even pursued this placement. It was something El said, in the end. It dug into him.

 _Why can’t you just_ be, _Lou? Why can’t you just exist in the world without poking at everyone for a reaction?_

He closes his eyes and tries to relax, but the hum of the electric lights and the hollow whoosh of the HVAC system and the grumbling in his stomach won’t let up, so he swings his legs off the bed and stands. He stumbles a bit. Jesus. Not bad. He’ll have to thank Niall again, proper like. Get him something nice from the commissary.

He tugs on a jumper and his parka and grabs his smokes and lets himself out the door into the hallway. It’s quiet out here. Everyone’s asleep. Everyone’s occupying their own space. Everyone is autonomous, the way he’s meant to be. Just Louis. Not Louis in the context of anyone else.

He shuffles down to the end of the hall, trailing his hand along the wall as he goes. It’s a mess of paper, little notices, inquiries, hellos and goodbyes. They’re all living in this sort of limbo for the time being, the last of the Summer crew is getting ready to fly out and then everything will go quiet and their work will really begin. The fine-tuning. Transmitting into silence and darkness and cold.

He makes his way to the main door, which is behind a smaller door. Niall’s told him all about the winter. The way the snow creeps in through the cracks. The way the winds make you feel like the entire continent will be ripped up and away and tossed into the void. But that’s the bad days. Niall says on the good days, everything is still, save for the ice, and the stars flash like strobe lights and if you look up, you can see everything. You can see right through the universe.

So that’s something to look forward to.

He checks his watch. Half past midnight. Opens the outer door and steps outside. It’s balmy, about -10c, and Louis tugs his gloves off and lets the air cool his hands. He reaches into his pocket and tugs out a pack of cigarettes, lights one up and leans against the side of the dorms. It’s dark but not that dark. It’s like a small city here sometimes, with all the lights. The sodium glow turns the snow yellow. The snow is already yellow. Muddied. It’s not stormed in a week. He takes a long drag and looks up at the night sky and thinks how strange it is, to be here. To be at the bottom of the world and to be looking at the sky and it’s just…it’s just the sky. He’s got to get away from all this light. He’s got to leave. But first he’s got to go through the safety training, and from what Niall’s told him that’s horrid and embarrassing so he’s been putting it off for weeks.

 _Soon_ , he thinks. _I’ll make it happen soon._

He takes another drag and exhales into the dark. Something catches his eye, just across the rutted path that runs in front of the dorm. The glowing tip of a cigarette. Someone else out here in the night. Louis can’t see who it is, they’ve chosen to lurk in the shadows like a creepy vampire, but he knows whoever it is can see _him_ , because he’s standing under a lamp. He probably looks sickly and weird in the yellow glow. Louis raises a hand and waves into the dark. He can’t know if the person waves back.

* * *

 

“Ha! That’s mental!”

Niall has a piece of overcooked chicken in his mouth. Louis can see it, because he’s laughing hysterically.

“Christ. You’re getting chicken bits all over my computer.”

He shuts his laptop quickly and shoves it into his bag under the table. Niall takes another bite of chicken.

“It’s just cool, though, you know? They way they move. They’re like totally in sync. Like they’ve got a dedicated channel or something. Little radios like..transmittin’.”

Harry is nodding.

“Are they identical?”

Louis frowns over at him.

“One of them is named Ernie. The other is Doris. I just…I just told you that, Harry.”

Harry shrugs.

“Dunno, didn’t want to assume. Anyway, they’ve got different DNA then but it’s still cool, you know?”

Niall rolls his eyes.

“Yes it’s still cool, Haz. But I’m sorry it’s not like…science cool.”

Harry smiles in a pleasant sort of way, his eyes lighting up. He’s looking right at Niall now.

“Nah…no no, it’s _very_ cool, you know? Like…fraternal twins are super interesting in terms of combinations and variations on a genetic code. There’s a lot to be looked at there, right?”

Niall nods.

“Yeah alright.”

Harry keeps talking, waving his arms about, and it seems very convoluted and circuitous and dull but Niall doesn’t seem bothered, he just eats and nods along. Louis tunes Harry out and looks around the mess hall. The crowd is thinning, more and more people are leaving. The last flight is in two weeks and then it’ll just be the lot of them, some of the plant people to maintain the hydroponics and the firemen and the maintenance crew. The ones who keep this place alive. He scans the crowd and he’d like to think that he’s not looking for anyone in particular but that’s probably a lie. It’s just _weird_. Zayn is like a ghost when they’re not in the lab. He must eat in his room, or maybe he just doesn’t eat at all.  

“You know I was a twin.”

Louis looks up at Niall. He must be taking the piss or something.

“What? What does that mean?”

“When I was in me ma. There was two of me.”

Harry’s eyes go wide.

“No fucking way. Why don’t I _know_ that?”

“Dunno, it’s just a thing. Other one didn’t make it or something.”

Louis sets his fork down and says “that’s awful” just as Harry is saying “wicked.”

Niall just smiles like he’s not bothered, and Harry looks like something momentous has just dawned on him.

“Oh my god,” he says, “did you eat him?”

Louis grabs his bag and stands.

“Aaaand that’s my cue, lads. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Wait! Are you off to the lab?” Harry asks.

Louis pauses, one knee on the cafeteria bench, his bag in hand.

“Yeah, gotta run some diagnostics.”

“Is Zayn gonna be there?”

“Uh…yeah? He’s my lab tech. He’s always there.”

Harry is making the strangest face. Louis can’t suss out why he cares.

“Is it not weird? Like…how’s that going?”

“Uh…dunno? He’s not the most talkative—“

“But like…it’s got to be awkward, working with someone you—“ Harry tilts his head in a funny way and then whistles. He’s making some kind of motion with his hands. Louis just stares at him, dumbfounded.

“What are you—“

“OH MY GOD, HARRY.”

They both turn to Niall, whose eyes have gone wide as saucers.

“Harry. Zayn and Louis don’t know each other, Louis was just—Oh my god.”

“But he said—“

Niall is laughing now. He’s laughing so hard he’s having trouble breathing and Louis is confused. He feels like the butt of a joke, which he can’t stand. He should be the one taking the piss.

“What the fuck are you two on about?”

“Oh my god. Louis, he left! He left in the middle of the conversation…”

Harry blanches then, like he’s put two and two together. Like he’s come to some horrible realization.

“Oh. I…” He fumbles around for his gloves and his hat. “Sorry I uh…I must’ve got that wrong. HEY. I’ve gotta go.”

Niall stops laughing abruptly and sits up.

“What? But we’re not…we were gonna go slide on the ice patch.”

Harry smiles nervously and tugs his hat down over his head.

“Sorry, I’ve just realized I forgot to do a thing.”

“What are you—“

But he’s already gone, hurrying across the commons and out the door. Niall watches him go.

“What a fucking nutter.”

Louis just sits again, dumbfounded.

“How did the two of you meet?”

“Hmm?” Niall turns back to Louis. “Oh. You know, he was friends with a roomie of mine, we all went down the pub a lot. Stuff like that.”

“Have you known him a while then?”

Niall nods in an absent-minded sort of way.

“Yeah. Years.”

* * *

 

Zayn’s not there when he arrives, which isn’t a surprise. He’s not the most punctual person on earth. It was better with Jade, maybe. She was always on time, and that gave Louis some wiggle room. Louis isn’t the most punctual person on earth either. He imagines Jade over at Rothera with her feet up on the desk, tapping at her knee with a pen. Impatient. Irritated.

He sets his bag down and opens his laptop and boots up the machines. Runs a few commands himself while he waits. Checks his watch. Later than usual even. He’s about to call over to Rothera when he hears the door open and shut. He spins in his chair and smiles wryly.

“So glad you could join us—“

He has a fraction of a second to register the look on Zayn’s face--a mixture of disgust and pain and…anger? Zayn’s mad?--then Zayn is standing over him, looming, like. For a moment all that Louis can register is Zayn’s proximity. He’s looking Louis right in the eye, and Louis thinks _he’s looking at me he’s finally looking at me_ which is mental, because clearly something is terribly wrong. Zayn’s voice is tight when he speaks. Cold.

“Have we met?”

Louis just stares up at him, dumbfounded.

“I…what?”

“Have _we_ ”—Zayn motions between the two of them, sharply, like he’s explaining something very simple to a very stupid child—“met?”

“I don’t know what you mean…I’m not sure what you’re asking m—“

“Fucking _prick_.” Zayn walks over to his desk and drops his bag on the floor. He tugs his iPod out and tosses it on the table with a thud, then pulls his glasses off and wipes them on the hem of his shirt. It all seems unnecessarily aggressive and it makes Louis tense. Puts him on the defensive, though he doesn’t know what he’s meant to be defending himself against.

“Listen, if I’ve done something wrong, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe I have, so...if we could just like—“ Louis feels his armor engaging. Where the fuck does Zayn get off calling _Louis_ a prick? Zayn’s the one who’s been an arse. He’s the one who won’t act like a fucking normal human being—“I don’t know what your deal is, but like…no. No we’ve not met before, so I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve this fucking cold shoulder shit you’ve been—“

Zayn rolls his eyes and shoves his glasses back onto his face.

“RIGHT. Fucking right, we’ve not met, so why does it seem like half this fucking station is under the impression that we have?”

Louis feels like his stomach is dropping right out of him. He thinks of Harry. _Oh god_.

“Oh god.”

“Oh god is right, mate. You’ve been caught out.” Zayn is digging in his bag, arranging things on his desk. Prepping his console. “Honestly, what the fuck sort of person thinks they can just _lie_ about that sort of thing? And in a place like this? It’s fucking….it’s pathological.”

“Zayn, I—“

“I don’t want an apology from you. I don’t fucking care. I didn’t come here to make friends, just…it’s really fucked up. It’s fucked up what you said—“

“But I didn’t…” Louis buries his face in his hands, defeated. “Jesus. It was a mistake. That’s not what I—Harry only heard the first part and he must’ve told someone. I just…”

Zayn stops moving for a moment. He speaks slowly.

“A _mistake_? You _accidentally_ told someone we’d slept together?”

Louis looks up at Zayn, and Zayn’s looking right back at him. His cheeks look flushed. Like he’s embarrassed, which is mental, because it’s Louis who is absolutely mortified. His face feel hot. He presses the back of one hand to his cheek, trying to cool himself down. Zayn touches his cheek with his own hand, lightly, absent-mindedly, like he’s not even aware he’s doing it. Louis drops his hand.

“I swear…I’m not lying. It was a misunderstanding—“

“I know you’re not.” His voice is clipped. Zayn turns to the console again, like he’s trying not to look at Louis.

“It’s fucking Niall, he was poking at me…talking about you and like…asking stupid questions. Asking if I would like—“

“You don’t need to explain this I don’t care.”

“I didn’t say—I didn’t say I knew _you_ , I said I knew your type.” He cringes at that. This all sounds terrible. “It was a stupid thing to say. I don’t know anything about you I was just…I just wanted Niall to shut up. Harry just got it wrong, is all.”

Zayn doesn’t say anything for a moment. He just frowns down at the computer. Keys in a few commands. Then he sits back in his chair and crosses his arms.

“So you’re not some kind of perverted pathological liar, you’re just a presumptuous ass..”

Louis frowns down at his hands.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Good to know.” Zayn reaches for his iPod and pops his earbuds in. Louis feels his frown turn into a glower. It doesn’t make any sense. This isn’t fair.

“Oh, ok. Now we’ve got that sorted you’re just gonna check out and keep ignoring me then? Fucking grand. Great.”

Zayn looks over at him.

“What?”

“Look I get that you probably hate me now, with the whole…not…sleeping together…thing.” Zayn looks at him like he’s crazy. “But that’s like…a recent development, right? You’ve been a miserable twat since day one. So like…I just can’t figure out what I’ve done to deserve this fucking _attitude_ from you.”

Zayn shakes his head and turns to his console. He looks tired.

“Nothing...or like...nothing before today.”

Louis feels agitated. Feels his pulse like a fluttering at his throat.

“Then what the fuck?! Why won’t you talk to me?”

Zayn presses one hand to his collar and swallows. He looks upset. Anxious.

“Can you calm down? It’s—“

“I AM CALM.”

“No, you’re not. Look...” Zayn presses a hand to each temple. “You’re giving me a headache. You’re just…really loud? And it’s difficult for me to work with you in the room, even when you’re _not_ being a prick…so I’d rather just—“ He picks up the iPod and waggles it a bit in his hand.

Louis doesn’t understand. It’s like he and Zayn are having two separate conversations. _Really loud_? He hasn’t said more than two words to Zayn in a week.

“I’m loud? What does that even—“

But Zayn’s not listening. He’s pressed a button on his iPod and he’s looking down at his desk and it’s clear that he’s just…done. He’s done with Louis. Louis stares at him for a moment, dumbfounded, then he looks back down at his computer and keys in the first transmission.

_Fucking miserable twat._

He’s calm. He’s perfectly fucking calm.

He punches the enter key and bangs his palm on the desk to get Zayn’s attention. Zayn nods.

“Set.” Louis’ voice is tight. He clears his throat.

“Mark. Initiating in three…two…”

* * *

 

“It’s fucking _freezing_ out here, you know?”

“Harry, it’s…this is Antarctica. That’s sort of the point.”

Harry shoves his mittened hands under his arms, hugging himself around the middle. He’s wearing this ridiculous hat, all sheepskin and fur and earflaps. His cheeks are rosy and his lips have gone dark pink and Louis thinks he looks like some sort of porcelain doll. Like something that’s much too fragile for this harsh climate.

“I know, I just…I’ve never been much good at staying warm. I dunno, I think I was meant for sort of like…temperate climates.”

“Why the hell did you come here then?”

Harry shrugs in his parka and bites his lip.

“Niall just…he made it sound really cool.”

“Jesus.”

“And you know…the research is cool. It’s all cool.”

Louis shakes his head.

“This winter is going to destroy you, mate.”

“Nah…I’ll be ok. Got Niall to look after me, innit?”

He hops from foot to foot incessantly, trying to keep warm. Then he glances over at Louis, his face a little wary.

“Hey I’m really sorry again. About the talking...and the--”

“It’s fine.”

“I mean it though...was he like really angry?”

Louis shrugs. He’d like to not be talking about this. It’s embarrassing, remembering it. Makes his face go all hot.

“Yeah.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“EYES ON ME, people!”

Louis and Harry stand at attention, waiting for direction. They’ve been milling about in the snow for the past 15 minutes while people trickle out the door to the dorms. It’s difficult to see who’s who out here. There’s about 20 of them in all, parka-ed and bundled in knitwear and Gore-Tex. Nameless faceless lumps of insulation. The safety lead is standing at the head of the crowd, slightly elevated by a hillock of snow and ice. He looks like something out of a calendar shoot, tanned and windswept and tall and bearded. He’s wearing the same station-issue parka as the rest of them, but he fills it out better somehow. He looks like he belongs, standing in the sunlight, framed by the towering icy expanse of Mt Erebus. He whistles a couple times and claps his hands, smiling brightly.

“Welcome to survival training! My name is Liam.” He’s a Brit, which catches Harry off guard. There’s not many of them here at McMurdo. “This is the day you lot learn how to not die immediately upon leaving this base. I know that McMurdo can seem very hospitable very much of the time, but never forget that you are standing on a continent that would like nothing more than to freeze you solid and swallow you whole.”

He says it in this very jovial, matter of fact way, like he’s telling the lot of them what’s on the menu for dinner. It’s disturbing somehow, like his friendly demeanor makes everything a little more terrifying.

“Jesus. He’s quite demented, isn’t he?” Louis makes a sour face at no one in particular. He pulls his parka sleeve back and checks his watch. He’s not sure how long this is meant to last. It’s bound to be miserable, but it’s a necessary evil. Until he’s completed the training, he can’t leave the station, and Niall won’t shut up about taking him on a scenic tour of the ice fields before the sun is gone for good.

“I like it. Very dramatic.” Harry sounds very pleased, like all of this is a fun game. Maybe it is. “He’s quite fit, too, yeah?”

Louis shrugs.

“Yeah, if you’re into like...brawny and bearded I guess.”

“The weather today is very agreeable. I know some of you have come in on the latest supply plane, and that means you have not yet experienced weather that is less than agreeable. Rest assured, when the wind picks up and it starts storming, you do NOT want to be outside alone. In arctic winter, we regularly see hurricane-force winds that create total whiteout conditions. You shouldn’t be out and about in whiteout conditions at all, but the weather turns quickly down here and we need you to be prepared. We’ll be working today with whiteout simulation gear, playing out a scenario where you as a team navigate back to base. So, if we’re all ready, please come grab your headgear and we can get started.”

Louis and Harry file forward with the crowd toward a staging area on the other end of the road. Harry gets there first and laughs giddily, like a little kid. He grabs something off a pallet and turns.

“High tech stuff.”

He raises his arms and places what looks like a bucket on his head. There’s a face drawn on the side in sharpie, smiling serenely out at the crowd. Louis laughs, then reaches up and straightens Harry’s bucket so his illustrated analog is looking forward.

“You look very prepared to tackle the elements.”

Harry says something, but his voice is muffled by the bucket and Louis just laughs. He steps over to the pallet and reaches for his own makeshift helmet, but someone else has got there first and is grabbing at the same bucket. Louis pulls his hand back, and when he looks up, he sees Zayn, just standing there. A few feet away. Louis feels his face go red with shame and embarrassment, like a reflex. He’s not seen Zayn since yesterday but he can’t stop thinking about him—what Zayn must have heard, what the entire base thinks. Louis’ mind has been positively spinning. It’s mortifying, honestly. And it’s his own stupid fault. Zayn makes a face like he’s eaten something sour, and then he takes the bucket that’s sitting between them. Louis thinks he mutters something as he puts it over his head, but he can’t hear Zayn properly through the plastic.

The face drawn on Zayn’s bucket is positively morose. Cartoonishly sad. Louis would like to laugh at that, but he’s too spun around by his own embarrassment. He feels like he wants to put a bucket on his head and shut the world out, so he does, and everything goes white. The sound of people laughing and talking becomes muffled and strange and mostly all Louis can hear is his own breath, echoing off the white plastic. It’s strangely comforting in here. Weirdly serene. Like all the stimulus, all the embarrassment and shame, has been cut right out. There’s a gentle whack on the side of his bucket. Someone grabs his right hand, then he feels someone tugging at his left.

“Alright, folks. When I blow this whistle, you all navigate back to the door we came out of. Do not let go of your teammates’ hands! That is your lifeline. In whiteout conditions, you stick together or you die.”

It takes them half an hour to find the door, and when the meteorological tech leading the group gets there, he pulls his bucket off triumphantly to find that he’s led everyone to a maintenance shed halfway across a snow field. Louis lifts his bucket and sees Liam watching them from across the road, shaking his head and smiling. 45 minutes later, he ends the game and sits them down to talk strategy.

At 5, the sun is sinking lower in the sky and Louis starts to wonder about dinner. They’ve been out here for hours, wandering in the snow, poking at the ice with sticks, sliding down slopes and controlling their descent with poor to moderate results, learning about crevasses and how to carve out and stack blocks of ice to make a shelter. Harry looks exhausted. He looks like Louis feels.

“Right! Good work everyone. The sun is about to go down, which means it’s dinner time. I know you’re all quite hungry and tired. It’s been a long day.” There’s a quiet wave of relieved chatter from the crowd. “The good news is, we’ve brought dinner to you!” The chatter turns confused. Wary. “The bad news is, you’ll be sleeping out here tonight.”

Louis looks over at Harry and Harry looks back at him, aghast.

“God…” He tugs at his hat, pulling it further down over his head. “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“We’ll be splitting off into pairs and finishing up these shelters using what we’ve learned today. Be sure to take good care, yeah? That’s your new home you’re building.”

Louis feels Harry grabbing at the sleeve of his parka.

“Partners?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“If you’ll please direct your attention to the face drawn on the outside of your bucket, you will see that each one has a twin.”

Harry drops his hand.

“Aw, fuck.”

Louis nods. Aw, fuck indeed. He hasn’t even looked at his bucket since he took it off and set it aside. He turns and grabs it from where it’s half buried in a snow drift.

“Please find your matching bucket and say a friendly hello. That’ll be your bunk mate for the night.”

Louis holds the bucket between his hands. He doesn’t move or speak. He can hear Harry saying hello to someone, standing up and moving away, but Louis just looks down at his lap. At the battered white plastic. A cartoonishly sad face frowns back at him.

“Fuck.”

It’s awful right from the get-go, and that’s mostly Louis’ fault. It’s his fucking mouth, he can’t control it, even when he’s not nervous and cold and tired and totally off balance. Zayn walks over with his bucket dangling from one hand and tosses it next to Louis. He shrugs in a resigned sort of way and sits, and Louis isn’t sure what to say by way of greeting so what comes out of his mouth is

“I guess we’ll be sleeping together after all, then”

And he regrets it before he’s even finished the sentence, but he can’t seem to stop himself. Can’t bite his bloody tongue.

Zayn laughs in a bitter, mirthless sort of way and Louis looks down at the snow and says “sorry” and then Liam is tossing energy bars at their heads and apparently that’s supper. That’s what they’re meant to survive on. Louis gets his out of the wrapper and Zayn sort of turns his over in his hands, then shoves it into the pocket of his parka.

They just sit there. Louis takes small bites of his energy bar and Zayn doesn’t say anything, surprising no one, and when Louis looks over, Zayn is watching him with the strangest look on his face. Like he might be sick. Louis freezes mid-chew. He feels something like anger rising into his throat.

“What?”

Zayn shakes his head.

“Sorry. I just…can’t watch people eat it’s—“

Louis waits. Zayn turns away.

“Sorry but...I’m hungry.” Louis waggles the energy bar in his hand, irritated. “So I’m going to eat this. Shall I put the bucket back on my head?”

Zayn laughs at that, quick and light, and it stirs something in Louis. He feels triumphant. Vindicated. _I made him laugh I did it_. He looks around quickly, wondering if Harry saw, if anyone saw, as if that was a thing that mattered.

“No it’s…it’s not you it’s me.”

Louis rolls his eyes sarcastically.

“Never heard that one before.”

Zayn’s faces changes then, and Louis’ heart sinks. He’s said the wrong thing. Again. Always. His fucking mouth.

“Yeah. I’ll uh…I’m gonna go dig out the thing.”

Louis nods and takes another bite of the energy bar.

“Yeah alright. I’ll be over in a jiff.”

The work is quiet and a little strenuous and Louis gets warm in his coat. He looks around and sees that he’s not the only one. People are shedding their parkas left and right, working in their thermals despite the bitter cold. He spots Harry across the way, still bundled tightly, rubbing at his own arms like he can’t get warm.

They don’t talk much. It feels like the lab in a way, both of them working parallel to each other, communicating only when they need to. They dig out a depression and stack blocks of icy snow that they chip out of the hill and it doesn’t look that bad. Louis glances around and sees some of the other teams floundering. Harry and his teammate are standing there chatting, staring at their half-finished fort and waving their arms about as if they can talk the thing into existence. Liam is with another team, helping them dig out a shelter that’s completely collapsed into itself. Louis looks over at Zayn, who’s brushing loose snow off a block of ice and placing it carefully on top of another. It dawns on Louis suddenly that maybe he and Zayn make a good team. They may not be friendly, but they’re efficient. It’s that way in the lab as well: the division of labor, the way they play off of each other when they run the tests, seems quite seamless most of the time, save for the constant undercurrent of weird undefinable tension.

He looks down and keeps working, chipping uniform blocks out of the ice. He hums to himself as he works, something low and droning and repetitive, unthinking. He hears Zayn laugh quietly.

“Huh?”

Zayn is smiling softly down at his hands as he works.

“You’re funny. _Iiii’m living in an ice age_.”

Is that what he was singing? He wasn’t really paying attention. Louis shrugs.

“Seems appropriate.”

“Bit dour.”

“Well…” Louis just motions vaguely at their surroundings.

“Fair enough.”

They keep working. The sun has dipped down to the horizon and everything’s gone sort of golden and soft. _The magic hour_ , Louis thinks. He can’t remember where he’s heard that. Maybe something El learned in one of her film classes.

“You into Joy Division then?”

Louis looks up at Zayn and nods.

“Yeah.”

“Me too.”

“Yeah I uh…”

He trails off. _I know_. That sounds weird and creepy. But it’s not, is it? It’s not so strange. They’ve been shut up in a room together for what feels like ages and yeah, Louis has extrapolated some things. He knows stuff about Zayn, despite the fact that Zayn has been anything but forthcoming. It’s just…when you’re shut up with someone that way you kind of…absorb bits of them, without even trying really, like osmosis. Zayn has a Joy Division shirt. He has a sleeve of tattoos on his right arm and they’re all graphic and comic booky and Louis knows that means he’s into that sort of thing. Louis would like to ask him about it. Ask him what he reads, talk to him about records, he’d like to just… _know_ him. But it seems Zayn doesn’t want to be known, and anyway he doesn’t even like Louis, probably doesn’t want to share any part of himself with him, so Louis doesn’t say a thing. He just sort of…gleans. And notices. And notes. And yeah, maybe he’s peeked at Zayn’s iPod a time or two while he’s down the hall having a wee, it’s just…he’s just curious. It’s fine.

Zayn looks down at his hands, shifts a block of ice left and right, then looks up at Louis like he’s considering something.

“I should…” he trails off, like he’s not certain what he wants to say. “There’s a reason I’m so like…weird? And we’ve got to work together so I think you should know about it.”

Louis freezes. He’s not sure what to say. The moment feels a little tentative and fragile, like Louis might say the wrong thing and put Zayn off.

“Yeah, uh…ok.”

Zayn tilts his head and makes a face like he’s in pain somehow, like it’s hurting him to say what he’s about to say.

“I just…took this placement because I figured I could kind of like…get away? Isolate myself, like.”

Louis laughs. He can’t help it.

“Join the club, mate.”

Zayn smiles tightly.

“No, it’s. It’s that I’ve got trouble being around people. I can sort of like…lose myself in them.”

Louis swallows. He thinks of El. Of a thousand different things she said. He nods.

“Yeah I uh…I get that.”

“Nah…you don’t really. I’m not...this isn’t a chat about feelings, mate.” Zayn looks around, like he’s worried someone might overhear. Like this is some kind of secret. “I’m talking like…literally. I’ve got some wires crossed?” He taps at his temple with two fingers. “Up there? And sometimes I have a hard time figuring out like...where I end and other people begin.”

“I...don’t think I’m following…”

Zayn looks tired suddenly. A little distant. He works at the ice again.

“I know. I don’t tell a lot of people, because it sounds like spooky woo-woo stuff. A lot of people don’t really believe it...that it’s an actual thing But it _is_ , like I’ve seen doctors for it.”

It’s sharp, the way he says it, insistent. Like he’s had to argue it before. Like he’s accustomed to defending himself.

Louis has no idea what to say. He has no idea what Zayn is talking about, and Zayn must see it in his face.

“This is…it’s really difficult to explain without just…illustrating, but like, if I were to take my glove off right now, and press my hand up to the ice, how would it feel?”

Louis looks down at his hand and then up at Zayn.

“Cold, I expect.”

“I mean how would it feel to _you_ if I did that?”

Louis shakes his head. The question is meaningless. Or it’s a trick, like one of those Buddhist riddles that doesn’t have an answer. He’s not sure what to say.

“Um…it…wouldn’t?”

“Yeah. Ok. But what I’m saying is…if you were to take your glove off and press it up to the ice, it would feel cold to you, and if I watched you do it, it would feel cold to me as well.”

Louis just stares at him.

“Huh?”

“It’s a sort of synaesthesia. I’ve got a few of the regular ones too, the fanciful ones with the colors and stuff, but this is different.”

“You’re saying if you watch a person do a thing…or feel a thing…you feel it too?”

Zayn nods.

“A version of it, yeah.”

“That’s…impossible.”

“It sounds impossible, it sounds like psychic X-Men stuff but it’s not, I swear. It’s not that exciting. My brain’s just confused, like. I mean…what’s even happening when you feel, right? Just electric impulses, little transmissions traveling through your nerves, prompted by an external trigger, right? My trigger is just…a little too sensitive.”

Louis nods. It’s mental. It’s completely bloody mental, but he’s got to assume Zayn’s telling the truth. Or what he thinks is the truth. Or something.

“So when I eat, you…”

Zayn nods. He presses a hand to his throat lightly and swallows.

“Yeah it’s…really weird. Kind of like squishy and uncomfortable? I don’t really like being around that. Being around people at all is…difficult. If they’re stressed, or in pain, or excited. If they’re hungry or tired or sad it’s just…I feel like a broken radio sometimes, you know? Like I’m…receiving all these junk transmissions and I’ve got no off switch. Sometimes I…have a hard time finding myself in the noise.”

Louis nods, He looks down at the snow. He tries to reframe his understanding of the past month. It’s weird, like he’s performing a retcon on his own perception. He looks up at Zayn and frowns.

“Is that what you meant when you said I was loud?”

Zayn nods.

“Yeah you’re…”

 _I know_.

“Sorry about that.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Yeah I just…” Louis stabs at the ice a little with his trowel. “I guess I came here to get away too.”

Zayn nods. He sticks his trowel into the snow and sits back on his heels.

“Look this doesn’t mean…I still think what you said—whatever you said--It wasn’t cool, ok?”

“I know. I’m an enormous prick. It’s fine.” Louis raises his hands in surrender. _Mea culpa_. “Thank you. For telling me.”

Zayn shrugs noncommittally.

“Just figured...we’re gonna be stuck with each other for a while. Do you want to check it out?”

“Hmm?” Louis looks up at him, confused.

“The igloo.”

“Oh…yeah.” Louis set the trowel down in the snow. “Sure.”

It’s beautiful, which catches him by surprise, knocks the wind out of him a little. It shouldn’t shock him, Louis supposes, it’s a magnificent idea, a house built from ice. They climb inside and there’s just enough room for them to lie there in the depression they’ve dug, side by side in their ridiculous parkas and neck gators, gazing up at the roof of the shelter. The last of the sunlight is hitting the ice and illuminating the cracks, making glowing blue lines of energy, like a protective web. Like something enchanted.

They don’t move, they just lie there, looking up and the curve of the ice. Louis reaches up and touches the ceiling with a finger.

“I made one of these once when I was a kid.”

Zayn just kind of hums in acknowledgement.

Louis remembers. The way it snowed that winter, like nothing they’d ever seen before. How he’d run outside with Stan and met up with a boy from down the road and how they’d constructed a makeshift igloo in the park, compressing and stacking and digging and carving out the shape of it. When they’d finished it was nothing more than a misshapen lump, a shallow narrow cave of snow and ice. Stan and the other boy had laughed about something, a joke Louis hadn’t understood, and he remembers how angry that made him, that feeling of being isolated, outside of some mutual understanding. He’d felt this urge, like he wanted to grab Stan by the arm of his coat and drag him back to the house, but instead Louis had just stood there, sullen and cold and shivering, and when Stan and the other boy had crawled inside the igloo to inspect their work, he’d retrieved a largish branch from the edge of the park and smashed the igloo to pieces with the two of them inside, laughing gleefully while they swore at him. Laughing like it was a joke. Like it was all hilarious.

Louis runs his hand over the curve of the ice and remembers how it felt, putting all that work into making a thing and then destroying it before it had a chance to deteriorate, to melt back into the earth naturally. How it felt to exert that sort of control.

Stan had crawled out of the wreckage, covered in snow and laughing maniacally, and he’d put Louis in a headlock. Called him beastly and shoved a handful of snow in his face. Louis remembers the way the cold stung his cheeks. The way it felt to have Stan’s attention back. The pain and the vindication all mixed up together.

Louis pokes a little more, traces a seam in the ice, then drops his hand to his chest.

“That one was shit though. We didn’t know what we were doing. This one’s better. We did a good job.”

Zayn nods and tugs one of his gloves off, then offers Louis his fist. Louis smiles and taps Zayn’s knuckles with his own.

“Nice one.”

They crawl back outside and discover that energy bars weren’t dinner after all, which is a relief. They’ve been issued camp stoves and packets of freeze dried stew and hot chocolate. Zayn takes his food back into the igloo, shrugging apologetically at Louis, and that’s an improvement, isn’t it? Everything has taken on new meaning. Zayn doesn’t hate him, maybe, at least not anymore than Louis deserves. He’s just a little weird. Got a funny brain, like.

Louis eats his stew and lets it warm him up and allows his mind to wander. Thinks of home. Thinks of his sisters and his mum. Thinks of El. The last time he saw her she was sitting on the front steps of her flat, fiddling with a bow on her top of her shoe. She’s that type of person, the type who has little bows on her shoes. Pressed cotton and leather handbags and hair that smells warm, like spice and chocolate and ionized particles. And there was Louis in his battered green parka, pinching a cigarette between his fingers. His face felt pinched too, the entirety of him, like he was being condensed. Compacted and hardened and sharpened like a diamond.

He’d said “can I come up? Can we talk about it?” and she’d said “no I think we’d better not” and that was that, wasn’t it?

The worst part of it was the way it seemed to happen out of his reach. Like she’d made a decision just outside of his sphere of awareness, independent of his influence. And that was maddening. She knew it, too. She knew that it would drive him mad, that denial. Not allowing him to poke and prod at her motivations.

Louis sips at his hot chocolate and tries not to think. He should go check on Harry. He should talk to someone. He should piss in a bottle before the sun goes down and it’s too dark to navigate the logistics of the thing. He should crawl inside the igloo and shut his eyes and fall asleep, though falling asleep out here in the cold seems next to impossible, even without Zayn lying there an inch away, just out of reach and unfathomable, like a human question mark.

* * *

 

It feels like he’s got something to process. Or an assortment of little things. The way the ice felt under him. Sleeping in a parka and gloves and boots, closer than he’d ever been to Zayn but just removed. It’s so weird, the experience of sleeping next to someone for the first time. The way you become so acutely aware of your own breath, of each time you shift your weight or clear your throat or sniffle or sigh.

Louis had spent some time with Harry and his igloo-mate, then tromped back over through the snow, clutching the last bit of his hot chocolate. Zayn was still inside, and Louis wasn’t sure of the etiquette. Should he knock? How do you even knock on an igloo?

He’d sorted himself out and peed in the bottle marked for peeing and had some water out of the one marked for drinking and he’d made a mental note to keep them good and separate, and then he’d just sort of cleared his throat loudly and crawled back inside.

Zayn was lying there on his back with his hands resting on his stomach and his eyes closed, listening to music. Louis could hear it, a quiet buzzing coming through the wool of his hat.

And that was that. No talking, no real acknowledgement. Louis laid down and closed his eyes and it didn’t feel like proper sleep, per se. More like half-sleep. Like an ice cold fever dream. He kept drifting off and dreaming of London in the winter. Of Doncaster when he was little. When Christmas was on the way and he could feel himself growing one year older. Could feel the world turning. Then he’d jolt awake and everything was cold and dark and pressing inward and all he could hear was the sound of Zayn’s breathing, even and soft, like he was properly asleep.

Then it was morning and they’d crawled out of their holes bleary-eyed and groggy, with ice on the tips of their hair and red at the tips of their noses and Liam had congratulated them on completing their training and herded them back into the station for breakfast. He’d lost Zayn in the crowd, in the din of the cafeteria, but Louis gets it now, maybe. The way Zayn keeps to himself. The eating in his room and the ubiquitous earbuds and the fact that he’s terrible with eye-contact.

It feels like he’s got something to process, so he finds Niall and of course Harry’s found Niall too. They sit, and Louis strips off his layers one by one and eats bland oatmeal and they talk about the training and about Liam, who Harry keeps referring to as a “hunk”, which makes Niall guffaw in a funny incredulous way. Harry smiles and tugs the collar of his coat tighter around his neck, despite the fact that the cafeteria is downright balmy.

“God...but how was _your_ night, Louis? Did it go alright?”

Louis just wrinkles his nose and talks down into his porridge.

“I can’t believe that luck. I was fucking mortified.”

“What? Why? What happened?” Niall glances at Harry, then over at Louis.

“Louis got coupled up with Zayn for the night. They had matching buckets.”

Niall’s eyes light up at that in a way that makes Louis turn immediately sour.

“Shit, Louis!”

“It’s not—“

“THAT IS SO ROMANTIC.”

Louis buries his face in his hands. He can feel himself turning red.

“Please stop.”

There’s a bang and a rattle, and Louis understands that Niall’s hit the table, because that’s a thing Niall does.

“Why does that shit never happen to me? Jesus. I’m doomed, you know?”

“You’re not doomed.”

Harry’s voice is quiet, like he isn’t really talking to anyone in particular. Louis just shakes his head.

“Niall, I don’t know what you’re smoking but—“

“Weed! Ha. Weed mostly.”

“Jesus!” Louis looks around furtively. “Shut up with that.”

Niall rolls his eyes and waves a hand around dismissively.

“No one cares, Louis.”

“Whatever, anyway I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re in fucking Antarctica. It’s not a singles retreat. It’s not a dating service, ok? And you don’t _hook up_.”

“ _You_ don’t hook up.”

“No, I don’t, because I’m not keen on being stuck in a confined space in the dead of Winter at the end of the earth with someone I’m…It’s just…It’s fucking weird ok? It’s bound to get weird.”

“Weird could be good though maybe? Weird is exciting?” Harry is chewing on the side of a fingernail. He’s looking at Niall, like it’s him who’s meant to answer.

Niall shrugs.

“Eh…whatever. Suit yourself, Louis.”

Louis shakes his head insistently. He’s not sure who he’s trying to convince.

“He’s not—he’s not here to like…mingle, ok? He just skulks around with his earbuds in all the time, and anyway I don’t even know if he likes—GOD! No!”

Niall and Harry both jump a bit at the outburst.

“Listen to me! This is exactly the shit—“ Louis pushes the bowl of porridge away from him, disgusted with himself. “I shouldn’t even be talking like this, it’s fucking rude, ok? He already thinks I’m a total prick. The two of you are like fucking _demons_ , baiting me and shit. I don’t know why I sit with you.”

Niall laughs maniacally and Harry just sits there looking wounded.

“Hey. I didn’t say anything, did I?“

“Don’t look at me like that, you’re encouraging him. The two of you deserve each other.”

Harry smiles then, like Louis has said something very kind, and Louis doesn’t care what _that_ means, he just needs to get out of here. He needs to get back to his bunk and get a real kip in before his shift. Before he has to see Zayn again. Before he makes it even weirder.

 

* * *

 

Nothing really changes. But everything sort of changes. Zayn still listens to music and they still barely speak but it’s different now, isn’t it? Louis knows he’s not imagining it. He feels more relaxed in the lab, like just being granted a little insight into what makes Zayn tick has let Louis unwind a little. Let him not take everything so personally. And Zayn seems more relaxed too. It’s nice, seeing Zayn that way, not so tense.

Louis can’t stop thinking about it, what he said. It’s like a chicken and the egg sort of thing, isn’t it? Louis feel more relaxed around Zayn, and Zayn feels relaxed in turn. That’s perfectly normal, but maybe it’s more than that. Like Zayn is picking up whatever Louis is putting out and matching him, receiving transmissions and riding the same frequency.

One Summer, when Fizzy was still in nappies, they’d moved a piano for Louis’ gran. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a shabby little upright she wanted in the parlor when her hips had started going bad. It’d fallen out of tune on the trip down the stairs and his mum had called a man in to set it right again. Louis remembers the case the man carried, filled with little metal wands of varying sizes. They weren’t electronic or charged, there was nothing magical about them, they just were. Their uniqueness and their purpose was all wrapped up in how they were made, in the information they held, like magic wands designed to cast a single particular spell. Later--much later--he learned about resonance and frequency and pitch but if he’s honest, it’s never felt any less magical.

He thinks of Zayn. The way he’s made. It’s like every person is a tuning fork of a sort, imbued with a certain pitch. A particular tone. And Zayn is like a sort of universal receiver. He’s a piano. It’s…magical. Even if Zayn won’t admit it.

Louis wonders what it would feel like to meet someone who was riding the same frequency as him. Someone with the same unique tone. Someone who resonated in just the right way. Who didn’t fall out of tune with him over time. He wonders if that’s even possible, and he wonders what that would mean. Would you fall into step with each other, in harmony, or would you resonate so intensely you both vibrated right out of your skin?

There was a moment last week...he can’t stop thinking about it now. He was drifting off between cycles, distracted, thinking about Eleanor maybe, or his mum. Something Jade said before she left or what was for lunch. He doesn’t remember. He was staring down at the table with his arms crossed and his tattoos had gone all bumpy, the way they did sometimes, and he was moving his fingers over the lines of ink on his bicep, mapping the texture of his skin in an absent sort of way, running his fingers over the antlers and the nose of the stag and along the curve of the heart, and then he’d heard a noise and he’d looked up and Zayn was watching him, his face all flushed, like he was embarrassed. Zayn had looked away then, turned back to his work with a strange abruptness, like he’d been caught at something, and Louis had felt self-conscious suddenly, like he’d been doing something indecent. Like Zayn had seen something he wasn’t meant to.

But that’s nonsense. So he’s trying to put it out of his mind. He’s trying not to make it weird.

* * *

 

“You have to press your ear right up to the ice.”

Louis feels ridiculous with his arse up in the air and his head on the ground. He feels like Niall’s taking the piss.

“Like this?”

“Yeah. Just wait.”

Louis can see Harry across the way, his face serene, framed in the fur of his hat. His eyes closed.

“Do you hear?”

Louis strains to hear, but he’s distracted. He’s distracted by the bigness of where they are. By how blue and white and iridescent it all is. It’s different out here, away from the base. More alien. More pure. More like what he’d imagined when he first got the letter saying he’d been granted a winter posting. He’s distracted by how absurd they all look, lying here on the ice. He’s distracted by a penguin. A single penguin, waddling along the ridge just to the south of them. He wonders where it’s going, if it’s lost.

Then he hears something, loud and unearthly and strangely electronic. A laser blast. The wail of a theremin. Then an answering call, and another. A cacophony. Niall laughs happily.

“See?”

“Yeah.” Louis closes his eyes. He listens. It’s a strange symphony. Like music he can’t quite comprehend.

“It sounds like Star Wars.” Harry sounds enchanted, like it’s the greatest thing he’s ever heard.

The ice feels so solid, it’s hard to imagine all the space down there. The abyss just 6 feet down. A sea that’s in motion, that’s quick with life. And the ice itself, alive and moving and shifting, even though it feels so singular to him now, so monolithic.

Louis sits back on his heels. The penguin is still going, walking along the ice away from them. It seems strange, the way he’s moving, like he’s on a mission. There’s nothing out there but ice and snow and emptiness. Louis frowns. He shades his eyes with a gloved hand.  

“Where’s he going then?”

Harry presses himself up off the ice and peers in the direction Louis is pointing. He shrugs.

“He’s just going, I suppose.”

“He’s moving inland, yeah? Shouldn’t he stick with the pack? Er…flock? Whatever?”

“Colony. Yeah…he uh…” Harry fiddles with something on the front of his coat. “He’s probably not going to make it, honestly.”

He picks up his bag and shoulders it. Adjusts his hat.

“Can we not like…turn him around? Set him to rights?”

Harry shakes his head.  

“Not allowed. And anyway, wouldn’t matter, he’d just course correct and continue on the way he was going.”

The penguin has disappeared over the hill. Gone. Louis wants to follow it. He wants to help.

“That’s mental. Why does that happen?”

“They just get like…confused sometimes. Nobody really knows, it’s just the way they’re made I suppose, with the migratory instinct? It’s just something inside of them that goes wrong.”

Louis grimaces.

“That’s depressing.”

Harry smiles.

“No…it’s lovely, you know?”

Niall is up now, off the ice and cuffing Harry on the side of the head.

“Don’t get him started Louis, he’ll get all poetic on ya.”

Harry waves Niall away.

“No but it is. It’s just…it’s like nature is in constant motion? Inching forward in fits and starts. Every tiny piece of what we are is engineered over thousands and thousands of generations, right? The variation is just…” He laughs. “It’s just amazing, you know? There’s bound to be…oddities. Crossed wires. Mutations.”

 _Crossed wires_. Louis doesn’t think of Zayn just then. He doesn’t think of Zayn at all really. Not at odd times during the day. Not when he’s trying to fall asleep at night, lying in his bunk. He wonders what Zayn’s crossed wires would amount to? An advantage? A weakness?

Harry sets out across the ice, back to Niall, back the way they came.

“It’s so easy to see it as a mistake, you know? Like something that’s broken. But it’s not. It’s progress. It’s forward movement.” He links his arm with Niall’s and pulls him along, back toward the base. Toward the mud and the machinery and the smell of dryer sheets and frying oil and PVC pipes. “It’s just nature perfecting itself.”

Harry stops to collect a few samples on the way, braving the shit smell and cacophony of the penguin colony, and then he rejoins them on the packed snow of the road, shoving plastic tubes full of waste into his bag.

“I was thinking of something the other day. About your work, Louis.”

They start walking again. The sun is sinking lower in the sky and everything looks very bronzed and snowy and romantic if he doesn’t turn and look back at the colony, which is like a Hieronymous Bosch-style penguin shit orgy. Like a smelly, squawking garden of earthly delights. That’s something he should have expected, he supposes, but it’s just not something you consider until you’re here in this place, seeing the reality of it.

“What part?” He asks.

“I was reading this book about Plato and there’s this story about soulmates? How like...a long time ago we were all split in half by the gods because they thought we were too powerful, and that’s why you can meet someone sometimes and it’s like _POW_ , you know? Because you’re like two halves of a whole. Like entangled, you know?”

Louis laughs. “I’ve heard that one. It’s cute.”

“It’s mental to imagine though, right? Like in the context of the little bits. The birth of the universe and stuff. Like...what if there’s a bit of me that’s in a bit of someone else, two halves of the same particle that got split a zillion years ago?”

“You’re even worse than Niall with the romance shit, Harry.”

“Ha! Yeah.” Harry adjust his hat on his head and smiles. “I’m way worse than Niall.”

It’s dark when they get back. It’s dark nearly all the time now, the sun only peeks above the horizon for a couple hours at a time. Not long from now it’ll be gone entirely. Louis isn’t quite sure he’s prepared for that, for proper winter, but he’s got no choice now, there’s no leaving. No in or out. Just the lot of them and the ice and the dark and the whole universe overhead and the stack of DVDs in the common room.

“You in the lab tonight?”

Louis shakes his head.

“Nah. We’ve got tests scheduled from six to nine tomorrow. Same shit. Different day.”

“Any progress with Zayn?”

Louis looks over at him sharply.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Niall laughs and holds his hands up defensively.

“Jesus! Nothing, I just mean are you friendly now? How’s the like…working environment or whatever.”

Louis eyes him suspiciously.

“Don’t look at me like that, I’m just asking!”

“It’s fine.” Louis shakes his head. “I mean, it’s the same. We work. He wears the—“ he motions vaguely at his own ears. “He listens to music. We don’t really talk. It’s not tense or anything, it’s just…he keeps to himself.”

Niall doesn’t say anything, he just makes a “huh” noise.

“What?”

“What?”

“You went ‘huh’.”

“No I didn’t.”

They split off at Louis’ room, Harry’s arm still linked with Niall’s. Niall says something about a movie night, about getting properly pissed to bid the sun farewell, and the two of them set off down the hall away from Louis, their shoulders pressed together, moving in lockstep like conjoined twins.

* * *

 

He spends the afternoon writing reports, watching videos from home, reading a book. He’s like a machine, inputting and outputting information. Moving packets of data. It should relax him. It shouldn’t feel so fraught, but he can’t seem to get used to it, the being alone. Not having someone to poke at or bounce everything off of. A book can’t talk to you, not really. A video can’t engage. The absence of dialogue feels maddening.

It wasn’t like this before. Jade was a talker, and there was Niall, and the days and nights felt reasonable, like days and nights. But now everything is dark and quiet and the silence is nearly too much to bare.

He lies on his bed and smokes a joint and thinks about all the promises he made himself when he decided to come here. Everything he said he would quit. Bad habits he thought he could shake. But you don’t come here to quit bad habits maybe. Maybe they’re what get you through.

At half past 10, he tugs his parka on and shuffles down the hall and out the door into the night. The sodium light above the door has burnt out, or it’s not come on, and it’s so dark it takes his breath away for a moment. Darker and darker every night, like maybe there was never any sun at all, and the stars overhead so bright they look blinding and immediate, like you could reach up and stir them with your finger. Move them around in the abyss.

He’s lighting up when he hears something behind him. He thinks it’s the ice at first, shifting, playing tricks on him. Then he hears someone clear their throat and he jumps a bit. The lighter flicks out. He turns.

Zayn is standing there, pulling his parka tight around him. He looks a little hesitant, like he wasn’t expecting to run into anyone out here. He tugs one of his earbuds out.

“Hey.”

Louis nods, the cigarette dangling from his lips, still unlit.

“Hi.”

“Sorry, I was just…” Zayn holds up a pack of smokes and waggles them a bit. “I can go like…over…”

“No! Er…” Louis tries to sound chill. Like it’s not a big deal, because it isn’t. “You don’t have to go. I’m fine.”

Zayn shifts uncomfortably, but he doesn’t leave. He tugs a cigarette out and lights it up.

“Cool.”

He looks away across the road, toward the mountain. Then back at Louis. Louis can just see him in the ambient light from the snow. His face changes, like he’s trying to figure something out, then he looks suspicious.

“Are you stoned?”

Louis nearly chokes on the next drag of his cigarette. He coughs uncontrollably for a moment, pressing a hand to his chest, and hears Zayn clearing his throat, like he’s got something in there.

“Jesus. Uh…”

Laughing. Zayn is laughing. Louis feels himself relaxing in increments.

“It’s alright if you are, I’m just asking. You’ve got like…”

“An aura?” Louis laughs and stands up straight, flicking the ash off the end of his cigarette. “Are you like…picking up my psychic stoner vibes with your spidey sense?”

Zayn smirks.

“Red eyes, I was gonna say. But yeah. I mean, you’re not wrong.”

“Not wrong like…you can like feel it when people are…”

Zayn shrugs. He takes a drag of his cigarette.

“It’s less feeling it and more like…being it. Like a contact high.”

Louis giggles. He can’t help it. It’s so weird. He hears Zayn giggling in turn, then he stops, abruptly.

“Shit. Sorry.”

“It’s ok.”

“No, it’s weird. I’m sorry.”

Louis smiles into the dark. He _is_ stoned. Zayn’s right. He must’ve smoked a little too much, or the stuff Niall’s given him this time is stronger. Something. It’s something. He feels silly. Unwound.

“I could get you properly stoned, if that would help. Then you wouldn’t have to ride my coattails.”

He feels himself blush then, because he’s just caught an image sort of, in his head. The two of them sitting on Louis’ bunk in the dark, smoking a joint. Passing it between them and brushing fingers. How close that would feel. The intimacy of it. He looks up and Zayn’s cheeks look a little pink and Louis feels a surge of embarrassment. Can Zayn feel that? Whatever that is? Zayn mumbles down at the dirty packed snow.

“Maybe…sometime. I dunno.”

Louis pushes it away from him, whatever it was. Folds it up and stows it.

They stand there in silence, just smoking. Louis looks over again and Zayn is fiddling with the dangling earbud. Like he’s going to put it back in. Like the conversation is over. Louis is filled with something like disappointment, then indignance, a hint of bitterness at the idea of being shut out. It’s not what he wants to feel, it’s just how he’s wired. Then Zayn’s hand goes still, holding the earbud in midair, and he’s staring out over the ice into the dark. He tilts his head.

“Whoa.”

Louis follows Zayn’s gaze out across the ice field. And yeah. Whoa.

“Do you…” Zayn sounds hesitant, uncertain. “Can you see that?”

Something in his voice hits Louis in an odd way. There’s something so wounded about it, like Zayn’s someone who’s accustomed to having his reality questioned. Someone who sees things that aren’t there maybe. Who’s intimately acquainted with doubt. Louis nods.

“Yeah. I see it.”

He looks back across the ice and it’s bigger now, more expansive, growing and snaking across the sky, green and blue and white and dazzling. It’s like a living thing. Like the belly of a beast that’s straddling two worlds, there and not there. Louis can’t tear his eyes away. It’s like…the most magical thing he’s ever seen. He understands the science of it, about charged particles and solar winds, he’s read about it in books, but it’s not the same actually being here, standing under it and it feeling so close. Like he could reach up and touch it.

He feels a nudge at his shoulder and he looks over and Zayn is holding the earbud out to him, offering it up.

“You should…it’s…”

Louis nods and takes the earbud. He tucks it under his hat and into his ear and then there’s music, loud and encompassing and ambient. Low tones and high tones weaving together and apart and it sounds like an electronic dance and he looks up at the sky and it fits perfectly. Like it was meant for this. He recognizes the song, it’s something off a Brian Eno album, but out here it’s something new. Like it’s spontaneously manifested here in this place, spilling out of the borealis itself.

 _Here it is_ , he thinks. _This is it_.

When he was really little, like 7 or 8 maybe, when things were bad at home, he’d gone to stay with cousins for the weekend, out in the country. Out where there weren’t so many lights and everything smelled a little like cow dung and there wasn’t much to do but throw rocks at things and fight, and at night, when the sun had gone down and everything was dark, they’d taken torches out into the field and played hide and seek. It was his turn to have a go, he was meant to find the others and he could hear them in the field, snickering in the tall grass. He remembers feeling so alone. Uncertain. He didn’t even know if they liked him and somehow that made him hate them. It felt safer that way, like hating them before they gave him a reason was a sort of armor.

He’d stood there in the middle of a field in the dark and it was all so cold and vast and clear, save for the stars, and when he’d looked up, he’d seen one fall out of the sky. A white streak, arcing across the blackness, and he’d thought _make a wish_ and then he’d wished for something. He doesn’t remember what. Something about his mum. He’d thought how lucky he was. How rare it all seemed.

Then he’d seen another fall. And another. And then it was hundreds. Stars burning and falling and streaking across the sky and he’d thought _it’s the end of the world_ and somehow that was okay and then he’d thought _I don’t know what to wish for_ and that made him feel panicky, like all of it would be wasted on him, like he shouldn’t be so alone in it, so he’d called out.

“Oi! Come out and look! Do you see this?”

But there’d been no answer. Maybe they thought it was a trick. Maybe they saw it too and they were too distracted to answer. Maybe they weren’t there at all. Maybe he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, walked into another world entirely. For a moment he could feel time standing still around him, cementing him there in that spot, in that field, and he understood that maybe a little piece of him would stay there forever. That it would become infinite.

He feels like that now. Like he’s walked into another world. Like he’s accessing something timeless. But it’s different because he’s not so alone. He’s got Zayn here, and they’re listening to the same music and they’re looking up at the same sky and that’s nice. That’s good. Whatever else they’ve got between them, however weird it might be, now they’ve got this too. They’ve got this moment. Something that’s theirs.

The song ends and everything goes very quiet and Louis hears Zayn sniffle. He looks over just as Zayn is pressing the back of a hand to his face, like he’s wiping away tears. Louis tugs the earbud out and offers it up.

“Are you _crying_?”

Zayn laughs and it sounds a little choked.

“No, mate. You are.” His voice is thick. A little watery. Louis presses a hand to his own face. His eyes are swollen, but his eyes were already swollen from the weed. Zayn rubs at his own face and wipes his nose on the sleeve of his parka. He takes the earbud from Louis and then lets it hang. “I think you’re just like…better at it than me.”

Louis feels himself blushing again. Embarrassed. Zayn’s not wrong. Louis hasn’t properly cried since he was a kid. Since he learned to hold all that inside himself.

“Sorry.”

“Nah…it’s fine.” Zayn puts his cigarette out carefully and tucks the butt into the pocket of his coat. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Or whenever.”

Louis nods. He opens his mouth to say something, but Zayn is already tugging the door open. Then he’s gone.

* * *

 

He can’t figure out how to broach the subject, even after running through imaginary conversations all morning. Even though he tells himself it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if Zayn’s not into it, it’s just an idea, this isn’t life or death it’s just work, it’s just a small thing.

So what he does is drop it on the desk in front of Zayn unceremoniously, like the afterthought it should be, and Zayn says “what’s this?”

“It’s a--what does it look like? It’s a speaker. I thought you could like…”

Zayn just stares down at it, a little black box and a mess of cords. Louis had convinced Niall to dig it out of his bin of odds and ends, the detritus of his work, tiny radios and stereo cables and ten-year-old A/V equipment. It’s not much, it’s not new or nice, but it’s something. A peace offering. An alternative. Zayn still isn’t saying anything.

“I just…if you need to like…totally shut stuff out, I get that. I just thought if it helps you to listen to music we could like…both…listen.” He bites his lip, feels himself go nervous, then tense, then irritated. He reaches for the speaker. “Fuck it, it was just an idea.”

Zayn waves him away.

“No, no it’s good. I’m down.”

He fiddles with the wires and tugs his earbuds out, then hooks his iPod up to the speaker. He just sits there for a moment, frowning down at the little screen, clicking around with the wheel. He hesitates and laughs softly.

“I don’t know what to put on. I don’t know what you like.”

“Doesn’t matter what I like, does it? Just put on whatever. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Zayn nods, then makes a choice.

“I’ll just…I’m just gonna start here and put it on shuffle. Sorry in advance.”

The speaker comes to life then, and it’s a familiar melody. Guitars, then drums. Zayn’s put on New Order, which is nice music to work to. But it’s Ceremony, and Louis thinks it’s a funny choice. Safe, because they’ve established that they both like Joy Division, but it’s not quite Joy Division, is it? It’s a conversation piece. Or Louis thinks that’s what it is. He hopes.

“Nice.”

Zayn shrugs.

“Just figured…”

“You figured right.”

He walks back to his desk and starts in on his reports, tapping his pen along with the music. It’s better already. All of it. The lab, the work, being here. It’s better with music, with the two of them moving to the same beat. He looks up at Zayn and wonders if talking would be too much right now. If he’d be pushing his luck. Maybe he should hold his tongue. Ease into it.

“Have you heard the live version of this? From before?”

Zayn glances over at him, then back at the screen in front of him.

“Yeah.” He taps a few buttons. “Can’t listen to it though, you know?”

“Too depressing?”

Zayn smiles. Small and soft.

“It’s also a shit recording.”

Louis laughs. He taps his pen on the table. On the clipboard. On his knee.

“Fair enough. This version is sad enough anyway. It’s like…Ian Curtis died and they just became something totally different? This is like the last _proper_ Joy Division song.”

Zayn seems to consider what Louis’ said.

“Nah…I don’t think it’s like that though? It’s not like he quit the band, he quit like... _everything_. I dunno. If you listen, you can still hear him in the music, you know?”

Louis just nods. He listens. Really listens. He’s not sure what to say.

“It’s like…” Zayn leans back in his chair and looks up at the ceiling. “It’s like when he was around he was force, you know? He was IT. But like…a force like that leaves a mark. Like he's gone but there’s always a space in the music? Where he would’ve been?”

Louis smiles.

“Where he would’ve been. Dancing terribly.”

Zayn nods.

“Terribly. Just horrible.”

The song ends, and it switches to some kind of trip-hop track Louis doesn’t recognize, and that’s ok. It sounds good, and it’s something new and he could use something new. He could use a change. Zayn sings along softly as he works and his voice is quite lovely actually, not like Louis’ voice. It’s not like Louis can’t sing, he’s just always been so self-conscious about it. The way his voice goes raspy and how not-low it is. Eleanor used to love it when he sang. She loved it when he made up stupid songs about her muppet dog Bruce and when he’d sing in the shower before class.

He’d like to not be thinking about Eleanor right now, but he’s beginning to understand that Eleanor crossing his mind isn’t a thing he can control. It’s just going to happen.

He types in a few commands and cues the transmission. Taps out a message on the keyboard in an absent-minded sort of way.

 _Zayn is singing_.

It doesn’t matter, it won’t get to Rothera.

 _Pretty voice, pretty face_.

 _help_.

None of it means anything really. It’s just junk he’s sending into the void.  

They talk through the next two songs. The first is a Galaxie 500 song and that gets Zayn talking about shoegaze, and Manchester, and Louis knows a thing or two about that, so it’s good. It’s natural. And it’s cute, the way Zayn smiles as he talks about a thing he loves. His eyes go all crinkly and it makes Louis smile in turn. Or maybe Louis was smiling already and Zayn’s mirroring him. He’s never thought that much about smiling before, about the infectious properties of joy, but what he sees on Zayn’s face reads like a reflection of himself. It makes Louis wonder what he was seeing in Zayn a month ago. If it was Zayn who was being a scowling, joyless prick or if that was just something he picked up off Louis.

The next song is Elastica, and Louis makes a sour face. Ribs Zayn about having a Wire cover band on his iPod. Zayn scoffs, offended, and says something about Elastica perfecting the form and Louis lets his mouth drop open in shock, looks Zayn right in the eye and slaps himself square in the face.

He feels terrible the instant he does it. Like he’s betraying Zayn’s trust somehow. Zayn makes a noise, sharp and small, and presses a hand to his own cheek. His expression is unreadable for a moment and Louis opens his mouth to apologize, but then Zayn’s laughing.

“You lazy prick, you can’t be bothered to walk like ten paces?”

Louis giggles nervously and sits back in his chair.

“Sorry! Sorry.”

“I never should’ve told you.”

“It’s true. I’m the fucking worst.”

“It’s fine, I’ll just start properly hitting you in retaliation.”

Louis shrugs.

“Fine, I’ll just start eating my lunch in here.”

Zayn looks horrified.

“You wouldn’t. You’re not that awful.”

“Dunno, maybe I am.”

Zayn sits and sorts his desk out. The song ends, another song begins.

“Nah. You’re really not.”

* * *

 

The music becomes a thing. Taking turns picking tracks, working to the same beat. Everything’s changed, in a way. It’s more like it was when Jade was around, when she and Louis would rib each other and talk about nothing for hours. Except it’s nothing like it was with Jade because Louis and Zayn don’t actually talk all that much. They talk _enough_. Enough to establish that they’re quite similar. That they like the same sorts of things. That they make each other laugh. But mostly they’re quiet, mostly they exist side-by-side as they work, the way they did before, except now they’ve got the music. Something filling the space between them. A wavelength they can share.

They fall into a routine, they way you do down here. Everything is routine. On Tuesdays, Louis stops in the mess hall and brings Zayn soft serve from the Mr. Frosty and they sit and eat in the lab with their backs turned, not looking at each other. Louis goes out for a cigarette at 10ish every night, just to be alone in the dark, and more often than not, Zayn appears. Or he’s already there, standing under the sodium lamp. They stand there side by side and mostly they don’t talk. They watch the borealis when it appears and Zayn shares his music with Louis and it’s like they’re having a wordless conversation and it’s nice. Nice for Louis to not feel compelled to fill the air between them with words. To poke and prod.

It’s dark all the time now, properly dark, and at some point in late-June, Zayn comes back to Louis’ room with him and Louis gets him properly stoned and they just sit there on Louis’ bed and listen to the Stone Roses. Louis can’t remember if he’s ever really _had_ anyone in his room. Niall maybe, but never for more than a few minutes. They smoke, and Louis shows Zayn some videos of Doris and Ernie and Zayn laughs. He talks about his sisters, how much he misses them, and that’s something they’ve got in common, too. Then Zayn leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes. Reaches up in an absent sort of way and moves his hair off his brow. Something in the gesture strikes Louis. Fills him with this weird deja vu. Zayn makes an odd face and laughs in a mirthless sort of way. He opens his eyes.

“That was one hundred percent you. God…I need to get out of here.”

The video has ended. Louis shuts his laptop.

“Huh?”

Zayn moves his hair again, in the same weird familiar way, and then it clicks. It’s not a thing Zayn does. That’s not his tic. It’s Louis’.

“Do I look like that when I do it?”

Zayn just nods.

“Ew. I look like a twat. I should quit doing that.”

Zayn looks confused for a moment, like he’s not sure how to feel, then he settles on offended. He glares over at Louis pointedly, and then he slaps himself squarely on the cheek. Lightly. Not hard enough to hurt. Louis laughs.

“Doesn’t work that way, you idiot. How stoned are you?”

Zayn shrugs.

“Very. I’m very stoned. Thank you.”

“You can thank Niall.”

“Harry’s boyfriend? Cool…I’ll just go over and see him tomorrow.”

Louis scrunches up his nose and sets his laptop on the desk, then settles back against the wall and crosses his arms. There’s something uncomfortable breaching the surface of his mind at the thought of Zayn visiting Niall. Something childish and proprietary, like Zayn’s not something he wants to share. He pushes it away.

“He’s not Harry’s _boyfriend_.”

Zayn giggles a little at that, like Louis’ said something hilarious.

“Okay.”

“I mean it. They’re friends.”

“Uh huh.”

They fall silent. Zayn’s eyes are closed again, like he might fall asleep. Louis isn’t sure what he’ll do if that happens. He isn’t sure about anything. Then Zayn speaks.

“What did you tell them about me, anyway?”

“Hmm?”

“Niall…and his not-boyfriend Harry. You said you knew my type.”

Louis feels himself going red. It’s fucking embarrassing. It’s embarrassing that Zayn’s bringing it up.

“Dunno. Just bullshit. I was just trying to shut Niall up.”

“Yeah but what?”

Louis looks down at the blanket. Over at the wall.

“I said you were like…one of those hip arty guys who pretend they don’t know how um…” Jesus. This is mortifying. “What they look like. That you know what sort of effect you have on people but pretend you’re like…oblivious and stuff.”

Zayn laughs. He doesn’t open his eyes.

“The effect I have on people.” He says it quietly, like he’s mulling it over.

“I said you looked like a prick, so like...that much I got right.” Zayn laughs. “And I thought you were the type to like…leave. Which…like…Obviously I was talking out of my ass and this is incredibly embarrassing so thank you for that. Good talk. Aces.”

“That’s funny.”

“Yeah. Hilarious.”

“Anyway, I should go.”

Louis scowls down at his lap. His stomach feels weird. Everything feels weird.

“Cool.”

Zayn makes a noise, a breathy giggle.

“Bro. That was a joke. Sorry. A bad joke.”

Louis rolls his eyes.

“Great.”

“Sorry you’re just…you’re cute when you go all sour.”

He says it in this nonchalant sort of way that makes Louis want to disappear because he’s probably gone beet red.

“Piss off.”

Zayn laughs at him. Like it’s funny, seeing Louis unsettled, but he’s pressing a hand to the center of his chest as well. Like he’s bothered. Like something in Louis has unsettled _him_. He tilts his head and scans the room, looks at the little shelf full of books, the cork board on the wall by Louis’ head. He gestures loosely.

“Is that one of your sisters, then?”

Louis doesn’t need to turn. Doesn’t need to look. He knows what Zayn’s talking about. But he glances over his shoulder at the board, at the photo of Eleanor he’s tacked up there against his better judgement. It’s just…everything is so strange down here, like an alien planet. He wants to remember home, even if home’s not what it used to be.

“No that’s my uh…”

Zayn raises his eyebrows. He makes a “huh” noise.

“I mean she _was_ my girlfriend. She uh…”

“Left?”

Louis looks up sharply, but Zayn’s face is soft. There’s nothing hard or cutting in his expression.

“Yeah. She left.”

“That’s your mum there?” He’s pointing at another photo, one of his mum and the twins.

“Yeah.”

“Cute.”

“Steady…”

“I meant the little ones, but yeah like…your mom’s not half—“ Louis kicks him, hard. Square in the shin. “Hey! Jesus I’m joking!”

“Fuckin’ right you are.”

“You’re so fucking _prickly_.”

Louis just laughs. He feels more than buzzed. He feels soft. He feels lost. He feels horny, but that’s the weed. He’s hungry. He wants a cigarette.

“I want a cigarette. Then I’m going to sleep.”

Zayn sits up and reaches for his coat.

“Yeah alright.”

It’s so quiet outside. Dark and silent and cold. It’s been storming for nearly a week and everything is covered in fresh snow so all the ugliness of the station has been smoothed over, made uniform. They move away from the glow of the sodium lamp and stand at the edge of the road where the hardpack becomes soft powder and it’s like they’re standing at the border between two worlds. Louis imagines how it would feel to go. To just walk into the darkness and keep going forever. To cross the threshold into that other place. Make a decision to leave.

“I do leave, you know.”

Louis looks over at Zayn. He feels much too seen for a moment, but Zayn is looking down at the the cigarette pinched between his fingers.

“What?”

“Like you uh…I mean you got that right…just in the spirit of full disclosure and all. That’s what I do.” Zayn smiles sleepily. He shrugs. “I leave. It’s like...with this thing I can fall into people sort of? With like…a _singular_ focus. And people love that, you know? I’m very popular with narcissists.”

Louis opens his mouth to speak, then shuts it. He can’t figure out if he should feel insulted, then he realizes Zayn’s not talking about him. Everything’s not always about Louis. And that’s it right there, isn’t it? He grimaces into the dark.

“I’m…probably a narcissist.”

“Nah, you’re fine. I’ve seen worse. I’ve left like…a trail of resentful egomaniacs in my wake. That’s why I came here. It’s just…people love a mirror, I guess.” He looks down. Kicks at the snow with the toe of his boot and takes a drag of his cigarette. “Until they don’t.”

Louis thinks maybe he understands. There’s so much he holds inside himself that he doesn’t let anyone see, bricked up behind walls he’s been constructing his whole life. The idea that someone could just…bypass that…

“I’ll do you now, if that’s alright.”

Louis looks up sharply.

“Huh?”

Zayn laughs, like it didn’t come out quite right. Like that’s hilarious.

“You had your chance to make wild assumptions about me, so I’ll do you.”

Louis takes a drag of his cigarette. He reaches up and worries at his fringe a little. Moves it carefully off his face. It’s that motion again. He’s never going to not notice it now.

“Fair’s fair.”

“I think…” Zayn smiles and adjust his glasses, pushing them up his nose, then he presses his fingers to his temples. Like a magician. Like a carnival psychic. “You care a lot about what your hair is doing.”

Louis drops his hand. Zayn laughs.

“I think you’ve got some abandonment issues. Probably a spot of dad stuff. That’s why you’re such a prickly bastard maybe.”

Louis feels indignant. He wants to push back, but he doesn’t. He just stands there. Zayn taps the ash off his cigarette.

“I’ve got a theory about you though.”

“What sort of theory?”

“I think maybe you wear the worst of you on the outside? Like a big sign that says ‘keep out’. So like…being around you was hard, in the beginning. I would sit in a room with you for five minutes and if I let my guard down it was like…I wanted to fight the whole world or something. But it’s getting better, you know? You’re not so bad, really.”

Louis doesn’t know what to say. He’s not sure Zayn’s right. He just hasn’t got to ugliness at Louis’ core.

“Well…” he sniffs, and then he coughs lightly, which is a reflex, and a stupid one. If he’s about to cry, Zayn will know. He can’t hide it. “You’re like…totally insufferable, but I’m glad one of us is good company at least.”

Zayn just rolls his eyes and raises his fists up in front of him like a boxer, like someone who can’t let their guard down. Like someone who’s ready to fight the whole world.

* * *

 

Niall’s workshop is like a labyrinth of strange black boxes and spools of wire and crimping shears and hardware. Louis never understands what he’s seeing. It’s all so tangible. So literal. There’s nothing theoretical about Niall’s work, it just _is_. Niall sits at his desk and fiddles with the wires at the back of a transponder and asks Louis to grab him various items and implements and half the time Louis gets it wrong. Harry sits in the corner, reading over lab reports, occasionally glancing up and trying to guide Louis in the right direction.

“Not that one, he’s talking about the 14 gauge. To the right.”

Louis grabs a spool of wire off the shelf that looks just like 5 other spools of wire. He delivers it to Niall. As he sits, Niall hands him the last bit of a joint, pinched in the end of an alligator clip. Louis snorts and takes it, feeling ridiculous.

“A roach clip? God…I feel like I’m 15.”

Niall just shrugs and focuses on his work.

“Gimme that back when you’re done, I’ve got to attach it here.”

He points at a nest of blue wires. Louis doesn’t know which one he means, but it doesn’t matter. It’s Niall’s job to know. That’s why he’s in here and Louis is the one who sits in a lab and does math problems and thinks about things no one can see. Louis feels the weed going to his head. He sits back in the chair and spins slowly, peering up at the ceiling. Takes a drag off the joint. He wants to talk. He doesn’t know what he wants to say.

“Did Zayn come say hello?”

Niall doesn’t look up. He makes a vague noise.

“When? Today? What are you asking?”

Louis drops a foot to the ground and stops his spinning, then pushes himself off and spins the other way.

“He just said he was going to come by.”

“He’s come by plenty.”

“Wait what?”

Niall laughs quietly.

“You’re not the only person who can make a friend in this place, you twat.”

“I dunno, I just thought he was keeping to himself mostly.”

“Nah, he gets around a bit. Honestly though, I was surprised, like. All your talk about him being this broody moody asshole? No idea where that came from.”

“What?”

“So I decided he probably just hates you. Hand me the wire cutters on the bench there, please. Anyway, he’s cool, you know? He’s funny, like. Good for a laugh. Little goofy and stuff. I like him.”

Louis just sits there for a minute, a little dumbfounded, then rolls his chair a few feet and grabs the wire cutters. He delivers them to Niall. He thinks of Zayn and Niall together. Niall laughing like an idiot and making jokes and fidgeting. And Zayn. Zayn the universal receiver. Mirroring Niall, becoming Niall.

“God. Of course you do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? ‘ _Of course you do_ ’. Are you takin’ the piss?”

Louis rolls away again.

“Yeah.”

“Eh…alright. Anyway, you did a terrible job of representing him, he’s not at all like you said.”

Louis hears Harry shuffling around in his chair.

“I mean…I’m sure he’s _something_ like Louis said.”

“Nah. He’s a peach.”

“He can be both, Niall. I dunno. I just…I think it’s sort of impossible to pin a person down like that? I think maybe…you become someone new, depending on who you’re with? It’s all like…your context. What the person brings out in you maybe. I don’t know if you can ever properly _know_ a person. Not every part of them.”

Niall laughs, short and sharp.

“That makes sense, then. So I make Zayn delightful and funny and Louis turns him into a wet blanket. That’s brill.”

Louis scowls and kicks out at Niall, knocking him on the thigh with the toe of his trainer.

“Hey! Quit it with the violence, mate. I’m workin’ here.”

“You know…” They both look over at Harry. His expression is sort of dreamy and not all there. Last time he looked like that, he subjected Louis and Niall to a long and pointless recounting of a dream he’d had about being on a train. “There’s like…stuff…everywhere around us. Living stuff that we like can’t define?”

“Harry you’re stoned.”

“Yeah, but no listen, did you know that inside your nose, if I took a swab and tested it, 20% of the stuff in there would be a completely unclassifiable form of life? Like…mystery DNA. Or like…your guts, say. In your guts it’s more like 50%. Half of what’s in your stomach is just…dark matter.”

“Wait are we talking about shit again?” Niall grimaces and puts a hand on his stomach. “Harry I just ate.”

“No I mean, my point is like…you can’t ever really KNOW someone. They’re always going to be a mystery. There’s stuff inside everyone that can’t even be defined so like…I dunno…why try to understand? Why not just like…experience?”

Louis laughs.

“I expect _you_ should try because it’s like…the whole reason you’re down here playing with penguin dung, mate.”

Harry laughs and looks back at the papers on his lap.

“Ha. True.” He waves his hands in the air awkwardly. “Science!”

“How’s yours going?”

Louis looks over at Niall.

“Huh?”

“Your science. Any big breakthroughs? Have you got that space walkie-talkie all figured out yet?”

Louis shakes his head. He stubs the roach out and hands the clip back to Niall, who sets about attaching it to the end of a wire.

“Nah. Still nothing. But like…it feels close? I don’t know…something about the mirroring maybe, or the way we’re encoding the information. I feel like we’re nearly there.”

Niall nods and turns back to the bench.

“You’ll crack it. I know it.”

“Thanks.”

“Now that Jade’s over at Rothera and not got to worry about babysittin’ you, she’s bound to get somewhere.”

Louis rolls his eyes but he doesn’t defend himself. He just resumes his slow clockwise spin.

“Yeah…you’re probably right.”

He tilts his head back and looks at the ceiling again. He thinks of Jade leaving. How it felt when she’d come in and told him she was transferring. The look she’d given him, like she was afraid of what he might say.

“Niall, do you think I’ve got like…abandonment issues?”

He hears a thud, then a rattle, like Niall’s dropped something. The sound of Niall laughing.

“Have you got _what_?”

Louis shakes his head.

“Ugh. Never mind.”

“You’re asking _me_?”

“You’re the only one who like…knows me down here, so yeah. But forget it. I’m just—“

Niall turns around in his chair, appraising Louis. Taking stock. It makes Louis uncomfortable, and that makes him irritable. Then Niall nods once, like he’s decided something.

“Do you remember when I told you I might winter at Scott?”

Louis frowns.

“Yeah. So? You didn’t. You’re here.”

“Remember how like two hours later when we were at dinner you got all shitty about how I’d broken the Mr. Frosty despite the fact that there’s no way I broke it just by operating the bloody handle?”

“You were the last one to use it!”

“And you didn’t speak to me for like…a week.”

“You _broke_ it. You put your big weird hands all over it and you broke it. I was angry, ok? I don’t understand why this is relevant.”

Niall just laughs, then he hunches back over his work.

“Never mind. You’re fine. You’ve not got abandonment issues. You’re a precious gem of a person, Louis. I love ya. Anyway, are you coming to the Midwinter party? Zayn’ll be there, not that you care what Zayn is doing or not doing.”

Louis tries to imagine Zayn at a party. Zayn surrounded by people. Zayn talking and laughing where everyone can hear and see. Zayn shifting and changing as he moves from one person to the next.

“Yeah…sure. Tradition, right?”

Harry sets his papers down on his lap and tilts his head at Louis.

“You’ve got to come, Lou. Niall’s got to have everyone in one place, you know? It’s what he’s meant for. He’s like a little engine that runs on human connection.”

Niall shrugs.

“I just like a party. I like people. I like _you_ , god knows why. You’ve got to come.”

Louis nods. He thinks of Niall, the way he makes friends with everyone. With the fire crew and the lady at the commissary and the way they light up when he’s around. The way he lights up in turn.

“If you like people so much, why are you all the way down here?”

Niall glances around.

“In my workshop? Because I have a job.”

“No, you twit, on this continent. Why come here where there’s no people?”

Niall raises his eyebrows.

“There’s people. There’s plenty of people. There’s like…less of them, but when you do connect down here it’s like…it’s different, you know? It feels bigger.”

Louis knows what he means. Everything in sharp contrast. Life under a microscope.

“That’s not it though,” Harry argues. “You’re not here for the company.” He looks at Louis. “It’s that to get up there, he’s got to put in his time down here.”

“What? Up where?”

Harry points at the ceiling.

“There. Space station. A placement down here looks real good on a CV, you know? And it’s mostly engineer types they send up there anyway. Mechanics and such.”

Niall squirms a little and peers at the transponder on the table like it’s suddenly become ten times more interesting.

“Stop it. It’s not even a real—it’s a pipe dream. “

Harry smiles down at his lap like he’s not the least bit bothered.

“No, you’re gonna make it, Niall. You’ll see. I’ll be down here cheering for you. Waving hello when you fly overhead. My friend the shooting star.”

Niall laughs.

“Nah.” His voice is quiet. “I’d take you with me.”

* * *

 

They gather in the mess hall a little after 7, and it seems someone’s done a semi-respectable job of decorating. The battered tables are covered in white cloths and they’ve set plates and silverware out along with plastic wine glasses and little vases of colorful fabric flowers. The walls are lined with flags, US, Britain, New Zealand. Louis spots an Irish flag tacked up near the buffet. It looks like someone’s made it out of construction paper and glue, and Louis thinks that must be Niall’s handiwork, the only Irishman for thousands of miles.

He seeks Harry and Niall out and finds them in the corner of the hall where Niall is bent over, fiddling at the back of some sort of PA system. He’s got it hooked to his computer, ready to play whatever mix he’s put together for the occasion. Harry is peering at the computer screen, making last minute additions and subtractions to the track list. Louis wonders what sort of music is appropriate for this sort of party. It feels distinctly Christmassy, warm and comfortable and festive in that particular sort of way, but it’s the end of June, which is about as far from Christmas as one can get. It’s disorienting, the way the seasons work down here. One long endless day in the Summer, which is Winter back home, followed by a period of semi-normal day and night, then endless night and storms and murderous cold while his family back home is writing to him about heat waves and trips to the shore.

“You need help with that?”

It’s a joke. Niall doesn’t need help with that, he’s the one person here who knows exactly what he’s doing. He looks up at Louis and smiles.

“Nah. Got help, thanks.” He looks down again at something behind the speaker. “Is that it?”

Zayn appears then, or rather he was there all along, he was just crouched down where Louis couldn’t see him. He stands up straight and nods hello at Louis. There’s a stereo cord hanging from his hand.

“That’s it. The cord was toast, see?” He hands it to Niall for inspection and Niall goes “huh” then sets it aside.

“Cool,” he says. “Let’s get pissed.”

Dinner is chicken. Dinner is nearly always chicken, but for the first time in what feels like an eternity, it’s not fried, and it’s not overcooked, and that feels like a special occasion in itself, makes the night seem even more festive and rare. There’s fresh greens from the hydroponic lab and smashed potatoes that actually have a proper flavor and boxes of wine. Dessert is tinned fruit and soft serve from the Mr. Frosty, but no one complains. They’ve not seen a piece of fresh fruit in nearly three weeks. They’ll take what they can get.

Niall’s attempt at soundtracking the occasion is hilarious: a mix of surfer rock and Christmas standards and the sort of music a cool uncle would listen to, the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac and the like. It’s all very Niall. The mix is a little heavy on the Rolling Stones and judging by the way Harry is bopping and singing along, Louis suspects he might be the one responsible. Niall doesn’t seem bothered. It doesn’t seem to faze him, having Harry poke at something he’s made, adding and subtracting, putting his fingers all over it. It doesn’t seem to bother Niall the way a lot of things about Harry don’t seem to bother him. The way he’s always pawing at Niall, laughing and talking right in his ear. The way he’s always around. Louis doesn’t know if he could stand that, but Niall and Harry just sort of seem to…fit.

He wonders lately, about the two of them. About what Zayn said.

They find a table and take a trip to the buffet to fill up their plates and Louis watches Zayn. He’s serving himself, just like the rest of them.

“You alright with all this?”

Zayn glances over at him.

“Hmm?” He looks down at his plate, then over at Louis’. “Oh…yeah. I can bear it. It’s a party, right?”

“Yeah.” Louis grabs two biscuits out of a little wicker basket. He drops one on his own plate, and sets the other on Zayn’s. “It’s a party.” He hesitates, and Zayn moves the biscuit over to make more room. He’s not looking at Louis, and that makes it easier for Louis to say, “I’m glad you’re here.”

Zayn smiles then, softly.

“Yeah. Same.”

They eat, and they talk, and there’s something about the four of them, the way they interact. It feels exponential, like they’re all feeding off one another. For Zayn that’s quite literal, of course, but Louis feels it in the rest of them too. Zayn laughs and it sounds like Niall, loud and articulated and braying, but it’s distinctly Zayn as well. Harry can’t sit still. His knees are bouncing and he’s fussing with his hair and he keeps telling stories that don’t make any sense, but they’re hilarious just by virtue of his strange drawn out delivery and Zayn is taking the piss, asking him leading questions and acting comically fascinated and that’s got Louis going too. Eventually the two of them are yelling over each other, arguing over the dubiousness of Harry’s allegedly disastrous trip to a sheep farm in Bath.

They’re about two glasses deep into the wine when dessert happens, and Harry brings a tray of soft serve and tinned peaches back to their table, looking like he’s on the verge of tipping it all onto the carpet the whole way across the room.

“God,” Niall sighs. He fills a spoon with ice cream and gazes down at it like it’s something precious, something sacred. “I literally don’t know what I would do without the fucking Mr. Frosty? It’s like...the only truly good and pure thing down here. It keeps me from going mad.”

Louis wants to rib him. He wants to laugh, but he feels the truth of it in his bones. He takes a bite and the tinned peaches are pure saccharine and the ice cream is soft and tart and perfectly smooth, dissolving in his mouth. It’s heaven. He picks up his wine glass and tips it in Niall’s direction and says, “To the fucking Mr. Frosty.“

He takes a sip of cheap merlot and the dry musty redness of it mixes with the peaches and cream in his mouth and he gags a little. “That’s uh…” he takes a drink of water. “That’s really not a great pairing, that and the wine.”

Zayn makes a small noise and covers his eyes. Turns his head away. Niall laughs so hard he makes the table rattle.

“Fuck...you know, lads, this is it. We’re halfway through the dark, right? You lot haven’t been through it before but just wait. A few more weeks and everyone is gonna go batty with the T3.”

“What’s a T3?” Zayn mumbles around a mouthful of peaches.

“That’s what they call it when you’ve been tinned up here like sardines for months without seeing the sun. It’s mental. Like literally. You start like...forgettin’ stuff. Finding yourself places not rememberin’ how you got there. People start like…” he raises his eyebrows pointedly “you know…”

“What?” Harry looks somewhere between frightened and intrigued. “They start what?”

Niall looks over at Harry solemnly.

“Eating each other, Harry.” His face breaks. He laughs. “What do you think? You know what I mean. They start like...fraternizing. Last July I came down here at like two in the morning and found a meteorologist and a plumber going at it on the Mr. Frosty.”

“ON it? How do you even--”

“Like leverage, I dunno the logistics like, I just know what I saw.”

“Okay.” Louis sets his bowl carefully down on the table and clears his throat. “Wow. Good to know.”

Niall looks at him, then down at the bowl. He takes a bite of his ice cream.

“Sorry.”

After dessert, they push the tables aside and Niall changes the music. He stands on the PA and screams at everyone that it’s time for dancing, then runs out into the center of the room where Harry’s already waving his arms about and spinning on his heels. He’s a terrible dancer. They both are. Harry looks like one of those ridiculous balloon men they put out to advertise car sales and Niall is doing what looks like some sort of half-arsed Irish jig. They’re both flailing around like drunken idiots. They look flushed and alive and they periodically drift over and implore Zayn and Louis, try to get them moving, but Zayn’s not a dancer and Louis isn’t feeling particularly performative tonight. He’d rather lean against the wall next to Zayn and watch. It’s nice, feeling that, like he doesn’t have to work the room or make everyone look at him. It’s something about Zayn. Like he’s grounding sort of. Something to orbit around.

More people start to dance, awkward and stilted and full of joy and red wine, and they all drink more, and everyone goes sort of red-faced and happy and the mood is infectious. It’s the frenetic emotional hum of a hundred people who’ve been holed up together for months. Who know they’re just about to pass the halfway point, that the sun is just around the corner.

“It feels like New Years,” Zayn says. He has to yell practically, to be heard over the music. “Everyone’s like keyed up. They’re all anticipating the changeover, you know? I love shit like this.”

Louis nods.

“Yeah. Me too.”

Louis spots Liam the Safety Lead in the crowd. He’s wearing a flannel button up and jeans and he’s dancing in this very charming, joyful sort of way. It’s all in his feet, like a little shuffle, somewhere between a very old man and an excited toddler. It looks ridiculous but something about the smile on his face makes it impossible to poke fun. His smile falters then as Louis watches, and he seems to excuse himself to the kitchen assistant he’s dancing with. He stumbles over toward Zayn and Louis, his footing a little unsteady. He’s just got time to say, “sorry lads” before he goes white, then weirdly green, and Louis comprehends what’s about to happen.

Louis doesn’t think, then, he just moves. He turns to Zayn and grabs him bodily, wrapping one hand around his waist and covering Zayn’s eyes with the other. Zayn cries out in protest. He struggles, but Louis doesn’t let up, he pulls Zayn over to the door and out into the hall just as Liam lurches over to the trash and empties his stomach into the plastic liner. Louis can just hear him through the door as it swings shut and he lets Zayn go. A quiet wretching nearly drowned out by the music.

Zayn pushes at Louis, shoving him away..

“What the fuck, man?”

Louis falls back against the wall, laughing.

“Sorry! He just…I didn’t want you to see. He was gonna be sick and I thought if you saw you would like…” he brings one hand up to his mouth and mimes profuse vomiting.

Zayn’s eyes widen.

“Oh shit. God, yeah, thank you.” He’s laughing now, and it sounds a little breathless. His cheeks are flushed and his eyes are bright and it’s like he’s absorbed the excitement of every person in the hall. Like he’s glowing. He smiles over at Louis. “You’re like…my hero. I could kiss you.”

Louis feels his breath catch at that. At the words. At the idea of Zayn, pressing him up against the wall and kissing him square on the mouth. The way his lips would feel. Louis blushes with the embarrassment and the wine and he wants to pull the collar of his shirt up and hide his face because he knows Zayn can see. That he can feel it coming off Louis in waves, but when Louis looks up again, Zayn’s just smiling down the hall a little wistfully. He looks back at Louis.

“Have you got smokes?”

Louis nods. He digs in his pocket and pulls out a near-flattened pack of Camels. Zayn takes them and starts down the hall, tugging a cigarette out and putting it between his lips. Louis can hear the sounds of the party receding, becoming muffled. The music stops.  

“Hey wait. Listen.”

Zayn turns, the cigarette dangling from his lips. He tilts his head.

“They’re counting down. Is it midnight already?”

Louis looks down at his watch.

“Yeah. It’ll be in 30 second or so. That was quick.”

“What are we meant to do when midnight comes?”

“Hmm?”

“What’s the like…” Zayn takes the cigarette out of his mouth and waves it around vaguely. “What’s the procedure?”

“I don’t know.” Louis digs in the pack and pulls out a cigarette of his own. He rolls it between his fingers. Zayn is looking down at the floor, or at the front of his shirt, maybe.

“We haven’t brought our coats,” he murmurs. He pops the cigarette back between his lips and talks out of the side of his mouth.

“Here it comes, then. Ten…nine….”

Louis feels like they’re on the cusp of something. Like they’re counting down to an explosion or a launch or the beginning of a race “eight…seven…” or like he’s running out of time. He feels buzzed from the wine and the party “six…five…four” and his heart is beating fast in his chest, like it could leap right up and out of him. He joins in, counting down, and when they get to one, Zayn smiles and Louis hears a muffled cheer coming from the mess hall and he doesn’t think about it, he just reaches up and plucks the cigarette out of Zayn’s mouth and kisses him.

It’s not gentle or hesitant, the way he kisses Zayn. He kisses him with fierce intention because he’s not sure he’s brave enough to do it any other way, to be soft about it. It catches Zayn by surprise, knocks him back off his footing and against the wall. Louis hears him laugh a little, and then his hands are at Louis’ hair and pressing against his ribs and he’s kissing Louis back and this is fine. This is all totally fine.

“This is fine,” he says it against Zayn’s lips, into his mouth, and Zayn laughs. He pulls back and looks at Louis like he’s crazy, his face is all flushed and bright.

“What?”

“Shhhh. Nothing.”

Zayn moves his hand over the front of Louis’ fringe.

“I’ve messed your hair all up.”

“It’s fine. I said it’s fine.” He grabs at Zayn’s shirt and tugs, pulling him back in. “Come on then.”

Zayn presses his lips to Louis’ again. His mouth is soft and it tastes like tinned peaches and he kisses slow, like he’s not in a hurry, but Louis is, so he presses. It’s like he’s trying to puzzle something out by kissing Zayn, like he could get to the root of him and see what’s there, if he’s quick enough. The bare truth of this person. Like he’s trying to get there before Zayn gets to the bare truth of him. He takes Zayn’s bottom lip between his teeth and bites down, not too hard, just hard enough that Zayn sucks in a breath and presses the line of his body against Louis reflexively. It surprises them both, maybe, the physicality of it, the whole of their persons pressed together, not just the curve of their mouths or the press of Zayn’s fingers at Louis’ neck.

“God.” He mumbles it against Louis’ lips. “We should get like…out of the hallway.”

Louis mumbles an assent, but he doesn’t move. He keeps kissing Zayn. They should get out of the hallway. They should go back to a room. They should get a room. _Fuck_. Louis feels the immediate truth of what’s happening for just an instant. The reality of the situation. That’s he’s got Zayn pressed up against the wall outside the mess hall. That this is probably a terrible idea. He’s got the thingy. The T3 or something. He pushes that feeling away. Stifles it. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. This isn’t even real life, this is something else. This is just the two of them, moving against and with each other. Just for the night.

Nights just happen to last a really long time down here. It’s fine.

Louis pulls back and his head is spinning a little with adrenaline and alcohol. He grabs Zayn’s hand and tugs him down the hall toward the party. They’ve got to walk through the mess hall in order to get to Louis’ bunk. It’s alright, they’ll just be inconspicuous. Keep to the edge of the room. But Zayn resists.

“What are you doing?”

Louis raises an eyebrow impatiently. They’ve not got time for this.

“I’m taking you back to my room.”

Zayn shakes his head.

“No.”

And that’s that, then, isn’t it? Rejection. Zayn’s putting a stop to it. Playing the responsible one. Louis wants to scream for a moment. He wants to drop Zayn’s hand and spit something ugly and cold and walk away, but Zayn tugs at his arm, pulling him back. He puts a hand over Louis’ face, covering his eyes and smoothing out his brow. It’s awkward and strange and it makes Louis laugh despite himself.

“You just got like…really angry.” Zayn is laughing, but there’s something uncertain in his voice. “I felt that.”

“I’m not angry.”

Zayn grimaces. He shakes his head like he’s trying to sort something out.

“Sorry I mean…are you ok?”

Louis doesn’t look him in the eye.

“I’m fine.”

“I don’t believe you. But...I forget to just ask sometimes? Instead of assuming. It’s rude. Look, I’m not leaving, if that’s what you thought. I just meant my room’s right down there.”

He points down the hall, toward the dorms at the South end of the building.

“Your room.”

“Yeah. My room. I’ve got one, you know.”

“Of course you do. Alright then, let’s go.”

Zayn has a room. It looks just like Louis’ room. The same desk and the same brownish carpet and the same bunk. The same cork board covered in different photos, but nothing is the same. It’s another world. Zayn’s room is color and light. There’s paintings—or drawings maybe, Louis can’t tell—tacked up to the wall. A string of little bottle lights along the edge of the bunk that glow red and blue and purple and green when Zayn plugs them in. That strikes Louis in some kind of way, the idea of Zayn tucking those lights into his pack, flying them South with him to the end of the world and putting them up.

Zayn’s room looks more _his_ than any space Louis has experience down here. It’s like a place you would go to meditate on something very deep and lovely. Something lovely like Zayn’s face or the curve of his shoulders under the fabric of his shirt or the way one corner of his mouth ticks upward when he laughs. The way he goes “aha” and looks at the ground.

“Did you make these?”

Zayn looks around at the papers on the wall, they’re all fluid motion, fields of color and light. There’s nothing in them that’s articulated, no physical objects, no human forms or bowls of fruit or landscapes, but something about them is so visceral and familiar, like Louis is looking at something he’s seen a hundred times.

“Yeah, it’s…I try to paint what I see? Or smell, or hear. Some of them are like…a flavor or something you can touch. A song…a feeling…things like that.” He looks embarrassed. “It’s relaxing. Helps me to like…deal with it.”

Louis doesn’t know what to say.

“That’s really lovely. They’re lovely”

It sounds cheap and inadequate, the way it always sounds when he tries to be earnest. To say what he’s really feeling. But Zayn smiles like Louis has said something really nice and then he reaches out and pulls Louis close and they’re kissing again and that feels safer, the kissing. Louis can fathom that, even though it’s a little like he’s becoming untethered. Like he’s floating up and away.

Zayn walks backward, pulling Louis with him, over toward the bunk, and they execute an awkward ballet of sitting and lying and making themselves adequately horizontal, all without moving their mouths from each other, like if they stop kissing they’ll have a moment to second guess themselves. Like it would break some kind of spell. Zayn’s hand runs down Louis’ chest and then up under the hem of his shirt, over the soft bit above his hip bone, and he laughs softly into Zayn’s mouth because it tickles. Zayn responds by pinching lightly and Louis shrieks and squirms away, laughing.

“Ugh! Wanker.”

Zayn is laughing, trying to pull Louis back up against him by his hips. He dips down to Louis’ throat and presses his lips to the little depression at his clavicle, to the line of his jaw, under Louis’ ear.

“Sorry.”

“I’m fine.” It comes out like a sigh, and that’s a little embarrassing. He tries to push through the feeling, tugging Zayn tight against him and kissing him hard on the mouth. Zayn gasps a little, and that turns something inside Louis and he presses harder, slides one knee up and slots it between Zayn’s thighs, presses his hips forward and feels Zayn press back against him, the line of Zayn’s cock hard in his pants.

“Mmm. Ah…” Zayn pulls back. “This is like…”

Louis pauses and runs his lips over the line of Zayn’s jugular. He has a weird urge to bite down on it. Not hard, not in a bruising way, but like…gently. Just because he can.

“Okay?”

Zayn nods, and then he laughs. It sounds nervous and a little reedy.

“Yeah I just…I’ve never done this before?”

“I’m...finding it really hard to believe that.”

“No,” he laughs again, like he can’t help it. “I mean like…with a bloke. I’ve never…”

Louis pulls back. He looks at Zayn properly.

“Oh. Wow.”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“What? Like what? It’s ok.”

“Is it?”

Louis shrugs. He moves his hand down the front of Zayn’s shirt.

“It’s not really any different. But like…are you sure this is ok?”

Zayn nods.

“Yeah. Way more than ok. I just…don’t really know what I’m doing, so…”

“Well…” Louis kisses Zayn, once, chastely, then pulls back. “What do you want to do?”

Zayn’s face goes red.

“Uh…I want…to kiss you some more.”

Louis nods, like he’s approving a shopping list.

“Right. That should be fine. And?”

Zayn winces a little. He presses a hand to his face and closes his eyes.

“God this is so embarrassing.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s okay.” Louis pulls his hand away gently. “I’m not taking the piss, ok? I just…I don’t want to do anything you aren’t cool with. So let me know.”

Zayn nods. He reaches down and presses the flat of his hand to Louis’ hip. Traces the skin just over the line of his waistband with a thumb. It tickles again and Louis says “easy…”

“Ha. Sorry.” He looks down at his hand. “I liked this.” Zayn pulls Louis toward him. Slots their hips together again and looks Louis in the eye, a little uncertain. Like a question. Louis is hard in his pants, just from all the kissing, and he feels Zayn pressed up against him, just a few layers of fabric separating the reality of the two of them. Louis bites his lip and breathes in, then out. He nods, like he’s giving permission.

Zayn kisses him again, slow and deep, and they move their hips, a little hesitant at first, like they’re testing each other’s boundaries. Then Zayn tugs at Louis’ lower lip, sucks it into his mouth and makes this noise, like he’s in pain or he can’t stand any of it, and he grips at Louis’ hip so hard Louis thinks it might bruise. He wants it to bruise. He ruts against Zayn and feels his breath go a little ragged and then they’re properly lost, moving against each other. They find an angle that’s just right, where they’re pressed together in a way that makes Louis feel lightheaded, send shocks of pleasure up his spine, and Zayn is kissing him, relentless and rough, and then Louis feels Zayn’s hand working at his buttons, getting his pants out of the way.

Louis makes a noise, a little bit like a whine, a little impatient and frustrated, like Zayn’s winning some sort of race, and he fumbles between their hips, gets Zayn’s fly undone and reaches into his pants to find his cock just as he feels Zayn’s hand moving around his own and that feels bloody brilliant. It’s fucking absurd, how messy it all is, how sloppy and undone and dizzying. He feels like he’s 15 again, rutting against a boy in the bunks at camp, hot and frantic and out of his mind with something raw and brand new. Zayn thrusts up into his hand impatiently, and Louis answers back and then Zayn is crying out, quietly, into Louis’ mouth, biting down on his lip a little too hard as he comes. The pain of it sends Louis over the edge, tumbling through his own orgasm. It’s sharp and immediate and mind-numbing, like he’s been knocked in the head, and the noise he makes as he comes is so strange and guttural and raw that he immediately starts laughing uncontrollably, Zayn’s hand still wrapped around his cock, moving gently. His laughing sets Zayn off, and they just lie there, giggling and trembling and breathing hard and Louis thinks he might pass out if he doesn’t calm down and take a proper breath soon.

Louis takes his hand out of Zayn’s pants and it’s all sticky and he’s not sure what to do. Everything is a mess of hastily pushed-aside clothes and cum and sweat and it’s all just very terrible and very lovely all at once.

“This is…we’ve made a mess of your bunk.”

Zayn pulls his own hand away and looks at it a little helplessly. He sits up and scans the room. There’s a dirty tee shirt draped over the end of the bed and he picks it up, inspects it, shrugs in a resigned sort of way and sets about wiping his hand off. Then he turns and cleans Louis up, carefully, working around his clothes, moving the shirt over Louis’ hand and between his fingers. It’s weirdly intimate, this part. Maybe more intimate than the actual sex stuff. Louis feels himself blushing. Zayn smiles softly as he works.

“It’s not so bad, actually.”

Louis frowns.

“What? The mess? Or the uh…”

Zayn laughs. He finishes cleaning himself up and then he tosses the shirt in a hamper at the end of the bed. He stretches out next to Louis again, his head propped up on one hand.

“Both,” he says.

They just lie there for a moment. Louis feels undone, like his stuffing has come out. Like he doesn’t want to get up. But he should, right? He should get up. He should go.

“Are we in the lab tomorrow?” Zayn rolls onto his back. His voice is sleepy. Slow.

It sounds like a dismissal. Like an invitation to go. Louis sits up and works at his fly, sorts himself out. He swings his legs over Zayn’s and off the side of the bed. He fixes his hair.

“Yeah. Midday shift. Should get some sleep.”

He slides awkwardly over the lump of Zayn’s legs and bends down to retrieve his boots, then realizes he’s still got them on. It all happened so quickly.

“Are you leaving? Don’t leave. Why are you leaving?”

“Sorry, I just…”

Zayn reaches out to him in a sleepy sort of way.

“You can stay.”

Louis just sits there. He doesn’t move.

“I mean,” Zayn sounds marginally more awake now, like he’s trying to make Louis hear what he’s saying. “I’d like you to stay.”

Louis nods. He should go. He should go back to his own room and sleep in his own bed and head to the lab in the morning and pretend this didn’t happen.

He leans down and tugs his shoes off, then turns to climb back in bed. Hesitates.

“You’ve got your boots on.”

Zayn makes a “hmmm?” noise and looks down at his feet. He laughs and lets his head fall back on the pillow.

“Take them off?”

“What am I your bloody butler?”

“Yeah.” He sounds like he’s falling asleep.

Louis sighs and works at the laces, loosening Zayn’s boots and tugging them off his feet one at a time, then takes his socks off for good measure.

Zayn lifts his hips and wriggles out of his jeans, but he keeps his pants on, which is a sort of relief. Louis isn’t sure he’s ready for that. To just sleep next to Zayn without anything to separate them, without fabric or armor or pretense.

They undress down to their underwear and Louis crawls up next to Zayn and they climb under the covers and arrange themselves, Louis’ arm draped over Zayn’s chest, their fingers lightly intertwined. Just enough. There’s nothing desperate or clinging about it. It feels soft, incidental. Zayn reaches up and pulls the glasses off his face. He sets them on the table and pulls a plug out of the wall socket and the bottle lights blink out and the room goes dark. Everything feels warm and close and small suddenly. Everything feels real.

“Good night.” Zayn’s voice is quiet. Breathy.

Louis shuts his eyes tightly. He listens to Zayn’s breathing go deep and rhythmic and he thinks of the last time they slept side by side. About the distance between them, what it meant then and what it means now and the way that people shift and change when they collide. He remembers lying in bed next to Eleanor, years ago, the first night they spent together. How he’d pulled her close and how alien she was and how familiar and how comfortable and how terrifying. The next day they’d sat at a cafe, sleep-soft and little raw. He remembers how it felt. How he smiled cheekily at her over his tea and said “are you going to ruin me? Because that would be good to know, right out of the gate. Cards on the table and all.”

Louis rolls over onto his back and stares up into the dark. He knows all about entropy. He knows all things tend toward chaos, but he’d like to believe for just one moment that isn’t true.  

* * *

 

“Louis.”

“Hmmm?”

“Lou, wake up.”

“Piss off.”

He tugs the blanket over his head and rolls over. He doesn’t want to look Zayn in the eye. Doesn’t want to know what’s living there or where the cards are going to fall, so he just…opts out.

“Louis. Come on.”

“Leave me the fuck alone.”

“You’re such a child. You’re meant to be older than me, you idiot.”

“Just leave me here. I need more sleep.”

He feels a dip in the mattress as Zayn sits on the bed. A hand at Louis’ shoulder, gentle and hesitant.

“If you don’t get up now, you won’t have time to eat before our shift and I don’t fancy being sat in a stuffy lab with you for hours when you’re hangry.” He withdraws his hand, then whacks Louis squarely on the side of the head. “So get the fuck up.”

Louis cries out in protest and throws the blanket off, rolling over. Zayn’s got his jeans on and his hair is all bed-messed but he’s more put together than Louis, who’s sleep-addled and nearly naked and vulnerable. Louis feels exposed and a little raw and out of control and he’s not sure what to do with that, so he grabs at Zayn. Pulls him down onto the bed and maneuvers on top of him. Pins him to the mattress then hits him back, one quick slap to the side of his head. Zayn is laughing and his glasses are crooked and he looks sleepy and frustrated and radiant. He looks dangerous.

“I should’ve gone back to my own bed,” Louis spits. “It’s far less naggy over there.”

Zayn tries to wave Louis’ hands away, to push him off, but Louis can’t let up. He feels a little like everything is careening forward, out of control. Like if he keeps Zayn here, he can stop time. Halt whatever terrible thing comes next. He pins Zayn by his wrists and bears down on his hips and says “quit squirming” and it’s a joke but he means it too, because something about the feeling of Zayn’s mass underneath him, shifting and warm and alive, is making him even more undone. He keeps _remembering_ things. Bits of last night. Zayn’s hands tracing his ribs and how Louis’ pants were restricting Zayn’s movement in a way that Louis felt right up to his throat. The ghost of his lips moving over Louis’ jaw and the way his tongue felt and the way Zayn kissed him, all soft and deep. The noises that came out of him. It’s all too immediate and he’s got to get a fucking grip, so he doesn’t let Zayn up. He holds him still and Zayn struggles and that makes it all worse.

“You’re gonna make us late if you don’t get the fuck off of me.”

Louis shrugs. He presses his weight into his hands.

“You shouldn’t have hit me.”

“You shouldn’t have been such a lazy prick.”

“You shouldn’t have let me sleep in your bed.”

“You shouldn’t have snogged me.”

“Next time I won’t then.”

There’s a pause, like they’ve reached an impasse.

“Off.”

Zayn moves his hips, and it doesn’t feel like he wants Louis off. It’s something else. A little desperate. A little involuntary. Louis can feel Zayn getting hard in his jeans, can hear that his breathing has gone a little raw. Louis bears down. He moves with Zayn because that’s all he can think to do, the only way he can exert some sort of control. Zayn is absurdly hard now, pressing up against the fly of his pants, and he says “god…i just need to…”

“What’s that?”

“Fuck, Louis.” He sounds so fucking exasperated. Louis laughs. He can’t help it.

“You need to _fuck_? Jesus. That’s a little forward.”

“That’s not—ugh. Fuck you.” It comes out like a whine and then Zayn turns his head, embarrassed. Buries his face in his arm.

“I’m not going to let you fuck me, Zayn.” He’s taking the piss, being cruel. He wants to be dangerous the way Zayn feels dangerous to him, but it feels like a lie. He presses down against Zayn again and Louis is getting massively turned on, just thinking about it. Would he let Zayn fuck him? Christ. He thinks he would. He’s losing it again, imagining it. Like everything is balanced on the edge of chaos. He leans down and bites the edge of Zayn’s jaw, lightly. Lets his voice go soft. “I’ll suck your cock, though. Would you like that?”

Zayn laughs into his arm and it sounds high and reedy and a little maniacal.

“Jesus. You fucking better, you prick.”

Louis lets him go then. He takes his hands off of Zayn’s wrists and shifts himself down Zayn’s body but Zayn gets a hand in his hair and tugs and then they’re kissing, hot and frantic and a little sleep-stale, and then everything goes sort of slow and Zayn pushes up on his hips again and Louis feels the kiss all the way down to the center of him. He gets Zayn’s lip between his teeth and bites down, just hard enough that Zayn pulls away and cries out.

“Christ. You’re a menace.”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

Louis inches down, dragging his teeth over the curve of Zayn’s neck.

“Being so fucking tender and shit. With the kissing. I’m trying to set a mood.”

He hears Zayn exhale sharply.

“Why are you being such a shit?”

“Shut up, I’m just trying to—“

He feels Zayn’s hand at his shoulder, grabbing at him, trying to tug him back up.

“Stop. Look at me for a second.”

Louis sighs. He presses his forehead into Zayn’s chest.

“What? What do you want from me?”

“I just want you to be _normal_.”

Louis feels a surge of irritation. Indignance. He sits up again. He’s lower now, pinning Zayn’s thighs to the bed.

“What does that even mean? You don’t know me.”

Zayn just looks at him, his face unreadable.

“Ok sure. But like, I can feel that this is…weird. I don’t want to feel like we’re sparring or whatever. So I think we should stop, or talk, or something.”

Louis feel too exposed. He needs to disappear. He needs to keep moving. He needs to get out of here.

“Don’t particularly want to talk. So like…I’ll just see you in the lab alright?”

He doesn’t look at Zayn. He just climbs off the bed and gathers his things. Tugs his clothes on and retrieves his boots off the floor.

“Don’t be too late.”

He hears Zayn laughs, a little exasperated. A little disbelieving. What the fuck is Zayn laughing at? But Louis doesn’t turn around. He just goes. Lets himself out the door and into the hall and away and away and away.

“There you are! What the hell, Louis?”

Louis doesn’t want to sit with Niall and Harry. He doesn’t want to sit with anyone. He wants to go back to his room and get in bed and sleep for a thousand years, but he’s got to go through the mess hall to get there, and when he walks in, there they are, sitting at the usual table, eating the usual flavorless eggs and toast, and Louis can’t just walk by. That would be too weird. So he walks over to the buffet and blindly scoops an assortment of brown and yellow foods onto his plate and sits, worrying at his hair with one hand. He wonders suddenly how he must look. Touches his mouth with one hand, lightly. When he looks up, Niall is smiling at him. Louis doesn’t like the look of it. It’s a little too knowing. A little too pointed.

“Where did you get off to last night?”

Louis shrugs and takes a bite of his eggs.

“Bed. Got tired.”

“Harry says he saw you manhandling Zayn out the door. Care to comment?”

Louis frowns down at his food.

“He uh…he was going to be sick. I was just helping him out.”

“Helping him out.”

“Yeah.”

“Helping him out all night?”

Louis can hear Harry laughing nervously. Quietly. Like he’s trying to keep it to himself.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Niall laughs outright, then, and that sets Harry off.

“Mate, are you fucking kidding me? You stumble in here like the walking dead, wearing last night’s clothes, through the _wrong door_? Where did you sleep?”

“Shhhh. Shut up.”

“Jesus, you’re not even gonna deny it. You look positively knackered. Oh!” Niall’s voice has changed very abruptly. “Hello.”

Louis looks up at him.

“Huh?”

Niall is smiling up at someone standing behind Louis. Then a tray of food appears next to him on the table and someone slides in on the bench.

“This is new and different.” Niall sounds positively delighted.

“Morning.”

Zayn’s voice is thick. A little mumbly. Louis feels a surge of irrational anger. _Why are you here_?

“Eating with the plebes today? How gracious of you.” He can’t keep the acidity out of his voice. He doesn’t even know where it’s coming from. He doesn’t like it, but he can’t help it either.

Zayn just shrugs and sets about eating his breakfast.

Louis can feel Niall looking at him. At Zayn. Back to Louis. Over at Harry.

“Oooookay then…you two are very pleasant company and all but Harry was just in the middle of telling a story.”

Harry looks confused, then he smiles.

“Yeah uh…so anyway I was in Tescos, right? And like the old lady was there. _Again_. Like…wearing the exact same thing and I was like ‘she’s a ghost she’s got to be a ghost’ so I turned to this bloke down the drink aisle and was like ‘can you see her? Is that a cat?’”

Niall nods in a serious sort of way.

“A ghost. Logical conclusion, yeah.”

Harry continues, and the story makes no sense. Something about an old woman and a cat and spilled tea. A Harry story. Louis tunes it out and focuses on eating his food and tries to ignore the reality of Zayn next to him but it’s so strange, him being here, that his presence is like a siren. Like a signal fire. Like some kind of message Louis is meant to be receiving.

He feels something knock against his leg. It’s Zayn, hitting him with his knee. Poking at him. Louis answers back with a jab, sharp and quick. He means it to feel like a “stop it” like a “leave me alone”, but Zayn’s just laughing quietly, so Louis stands and grabs his tray off the table.

“I’ll see you lads later.”

He drops the rest of his food in the bin and gets rid of the tray and hurries out the door. He just wants to get back to his room. He wants to get out of these clothes and take a shower and reset. He feels like he’s lost his hold on something. Like he’s been compromised. When he gets to his door, he can’t find his key and for a moment he panics. He digs in the pockets of his jeans and remembers taking them off, the way he tossed them on the floor, the way Zayn’s back felt pressed up against his chest. Warm skin and the way his ribs moved as he breathed in and out. Fuck. He shakes his head. He too tired. Confused.  

“You’re really good at running away.”

Louis nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Jesus!” He turns and Zayn is standing there, smirking. He’s holding Louis’ key in one hand.

“Here.” He leans in past Louis and opens the door for him. Swings it wide. Louis mumbles a thanks and takes the key and it would be nice if Zayn would go away now, but he just stands there. He doesn’t move.

“I’m not going, if that’s what you’re waiting for.”

Louis rolls his eyes.

“Jesus christ. What do you want from me?”

“I want you to quit doing this whole” he waves his hand around vaguely, “ _thing_ that you’re doing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ha. Sure. Ok. Anyway, I get it. Things got like…close…last night and that freaked you out so you’re trying to push me away.”

“Piss off.”

“Exactly. But like…I don’t know if you’ve noticed, mate, but there’s literally nowhere for me to go.”

Louis doesn’t say anything. He feels his cheeks going red. He wants to disappear.

“Listen…I had a really nice time last night.” Zayn’s voice is softer now, and that makes Louis want to scream. “And you did too. And I don’t completely understand why that is freaking you out so terribly but I’m trying?”

“Look.” Louis’ voice is tight. Everything feels constricted. Pinched. Like he needs to keep his entire being tucked in and pressed close. “It was a bad idea.”

“I thought it was a brilliant idea.”

“Oh fuck off. We both know how this ends.”

“So?”

Louis shakes his head.

“So nothing. So NO. I can’t sign up for some shit when I know you’re just going to fuck off come Summer. I’m not an idiot.”

Zayn won’t stop looking at him. It’s unnerving and Louis tries to look anywhere but at Zayn. At the floor or the wall behind him. He preferred it before maybe, when Zayn was the one who wouldn’t look him in the eye.

“Are you afraid you’ll fall in love with me or something?”

Louis makes a noise, indignant and involuntary. It feels too abrupt, inappropriate, like Zayn is breaking some sort of etiquette. He covers his face with his hands. His stomach feels strange.

“Oh my god, why the fuck…why would you even say that?”

“Because I could totally fall in love with you. That could happen. It’s easy, you know, that’s why it’s called falling, not like…climbing. And like…I haven’t got much else to do down here, you know?”

Louis drops his hands and stares at Zayn then. It’s bloody mental, the way he’s talking. What the fuck is wrong with him?

Zayn is laughing now. He’s laughing at the look on Louis’ face.

“You look like you’re going to be sick. Stop it, you’re making me nauseous. Listen, can I come in? Can we talk about this?”

“You can’t just bloody SAY shit like that. What the fuck?” Louis feels his head spinning, but he backs up, makes room for Zayn to step inside and follows him in.

Zayn sits on the bed, and Louis isn’t sure what to do with himself for a moment. Then Zayn reaches for him and tugs at his hand, pulling him down onto the bed.

“Listen, I think you’re looking at this all wrong.”

Louis laughs, short and sharp.

“Think I’ve got a pretty great grasp on things actually.”

“Ok so…enlighten me. What do you think is going on here?”

Louis curls his lip. He doesn’t want to put it into words, but Zayn is just sitting there, waiting for him to speak.

“I think we’re lonely, and fucked up, and horny. And it feels good but like…it’ll get complicated, and I just…I can’t do that. So let’s not, alright?”

“You want to opt out entirely because you’re afraid of the last little bit?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“You know you can’t lie to me about that shit, right? I can feel it.”

“God...stop that.”

“I can’t help it. Anyway, you’re afraid I’ll leave, right?”

Louis doesn’t say anything.

“You’re probably right, you know? Like I said. I leave.”

“So why the fuck would I—“

“Because it’s _good_. Right now, it feels good. We’re lonely and fucked up and horny and the sun isn’t coming out for weeks and this could be like…the one thing that keeps us from going off the deep end so…I don’t care. I don’t want to be careful anymore.”

“You should. It could send us off the deep end.”

“Nah…I shouldn’t. And I shouldn’t care that you’ll probably push me out the door well before I can even _think_ of leaving—“

“What the f—“

“Don’t even think of denying that. Look, there’s a good chance you could hurt me too. There’s a chance it’ll crash and burn. There’s a chance you’ll wake up one morning and I’ll be gone. Do you know how many people I told I was coming here? My mum, my dad, my sisters. That’s it. Everyone else I just,” he brings a hand up and makes a motion in the air between them, like scissors making one quick cut. “But hey, there’s a chance everything will be chill and amiable and we’ll get a friendly pint when we’re both back in London and there’s a chance I’ll fucking grow old with you and have a million babies.”

“Jesus. Stop—“

“Maybe two million. But you know the thing about that? Everything has an expiration date. Even if you grow old with someone, there’s a fifty-fifty chance they’ll like…fall down the stairs or have a heart attack and then there you are, you know? All that time and effort and they’ve fucked off and left you after all. So better not get close to anyone at all, right? Safer that way.”

“You’re fucking mental.”

“Well you’re a coward. And I’m a coward. But you’re a coward who’s afraid to take a fucking risk and I’m a coward who runs away. So let’s just like…get over it. You can let yourself have this, even if it’s gonna end, and as it stands I'm physically incapable of leaving so…”

“Stop it.”

“I’ll stop if you really want me to. I’ll stop. Just tell me you don’t want this and I’ll go. And I’ll try to be your friend, even though you’re going to be a massive prick about it, I can tell already.”

Louis doesn’t say anything. He needs Zayn to stop talking. To stop digging into the center of him. He’s too tired and too raw and he feels too exposed.

“It’s fine, you know? Whatever you need to do is fine. Whatever you need to do now, or whatever you need to do later. You can hate me. I’m ok with that. You can tell me to fuck off and—“

“ _Please_ shut up. You talk too much.”

“Ha. Ok. Tell me you want me to go and I’ll go. I’ll leave you alone.”

But Louis can’t do it. He can’t make himself say it. The thing about Louis is that he wants so badly to protect himself, wants to curl into a ball and scream at the world but he’s greedy too, isn’t he? He’s a glutton. He sees what he wants and he can’t keep his hands to himself. That’s always been his undoing. That’s why he’s always getting hurt. Why he ran all the way down here to the end of the earth where he thought there’d be nothing to grab at and take hold of him. Why he kissed Zayn at midnight and why he can’t tell him to leave. He shakes his head.

“I don’t want you to go.”

“Ok, well…we’re going to be like…horribly late if we don’t figure this out soon so—“

Louis grabs at the front of Zayn’s shirt and he says “I said shut up” and it sounds so much like a hiss that Zayn laughs. He laughs, and Louis kisses him and their teeth connect in a very awkward way and that makes Zayn laugh even more, but he’s laughing into Louis’ mouth, like a pleasant hum that Louis feels down into his toes. Zayn kisses him, deep and slow, and Louis tries to kiss him fast and hard, the way it feels safe, but Zayn won’t let him. He keeps pulling away. Slowing it down. It’s fucking maddening and hot and frustrating.

“We’ve not got time for this, just…”

Zayn presses his lips to Louis’ jaw, his throat, the edge of his collarbone just over the top of his shirt.

“We’ve got loads of time. We’ve got half the Winter.”

There’s something about the way Zayn’s touching him. The softness of it. It’s unraveling Louis. _He’s going to ruin me_ he thinks, but for once it doesn’t feel dire. He doesn’t pull away.

“We’re already late.”

He feels Zayn’s hand at his hip, moving up under his shirt, along the edge of his jeans.

“We’re fine. Fuck it, it’s not like—“

There’s a knock at the door, loud and insistent.

“Tomlinson?”

Louis jumps back, putting some distance between the two of them, wiping at his mouth self-consciously. Zayn’s eyes are wide and he’s got one hand pressed to his chest, like he’s trying to calm his racing heart.

“Fucking hell.”

“Shhh. Shush.”

Louis leaps up and tugs the door open, not too far, just a couple inches. One of the comm workers, Boyd something or other, is standing there holding a sat phone.

“Got a call from Rothera, Tommo.”

He hands the phone over. It’s bulky and black and a little unwieldy and Louis covers the mouthpiece. He glances over at Zayn.

“If this is Jade calling to tell me we’re late I’ll fucking murder you.”

Zayn shrugs and lies back on the bed, one arm folded up under his head like a pillow. Louis feels unbearably hot, like his face is burning up. He presses the back of a hand to his cheek and puts the phone to his ear.

“Yeah?”

“You’re fucking late, Lou. That’s like item number one.”

Louis hears Zayn chuckle. The sat phone is loud and obnoxious and he must be hearing every word.

“Sorry, sorry. Just…getting a slow start you know, Midwinter hangover.”

“I fucking bet. Is Niall dead? Have you checked on him? Listen though that’s not what I’m calling about. I’ve got some questions for you.”

Louis looks at Zayn again. Is he going to stick around for this whole conversation? He doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. It’s becoming a thing, this refusal to make himself scarce. Fuck it, Louis thinks. Just…fuck it. He sits down on the bed.

“Okay shoot.”

“Firstly, April 22nd. _‘Jade won’t shut up about the Spice Girls’_. That’s one that caught my eye, right? Because I distinctly remember that conversation and I thought we were both very invested.”

Louis’ stomach sinks to the floor and also ascends up and out of his body. Both at the same time. It’s the weirdest thing he’s ever felt. Like the realization that you’re simultaneously doomed and you’ve finally made your way clear.

“Jade what are you—?”

“May 7th. _‘Niall is dead he’s fucking dead I’m going to kill him’_. Ha! Jesus, what’d he do, insult your mum? Wait was that the week the Mr. Frosty broke? You were right livid about that, weren’t you? May 14th _‘to whom it may concern: fuck off’_. That one’s funny I like it. But not on the list of approved sequences. Actually, none of these are. But you know that, obviously.” Louis feels his face go even hotter. He hears Zayn laughing.

Louis waves a hand at Zayn distractedly. He wants Zayn to go away more than ever. He doesn’t want Zayn to hear any of what he thinks Jade is about to say.

“But like…here’s where it gets really interesting, right? May 30th. _‘Nice cheekbones’_. I would say thank you but that’s not me, is it? I’d gone already. Haha…here I like this one: _‘Fucking wanker, why won’t you talk to me’_. June 1st, _’Even worse tattoos than me’_.” Louis winces, but Zayn is full on laughing now. He sounds a little hysterical, like all the excitement is getting to him. “Oh my god is that him laughing? Is he with you? Is he cute? You made him sound fucking fit. Hi, Zayn!”

Louis leans forward on the bed. He tries to press the phone against his ear hard enough that Zayn can’t hear it, but it’s absurdly loud and it just makes his ear ache.

“God…can you…please just stop. This is mortifying.”

“You know that these are all going in the final report when we publish right? This is hilarious.”

“Jade, stop taking the piss for a second. Like…you’ve fucking figured it out, though? That’s the important thing here, right?”

“Of course I figured it out, Lou, I told you. I told you I just needed to get over here and tweak the algorithm. It was all in the mirroring like we said, but the info was never getting lost it was just…jumbled. It looked like junk. I just…dejunkified it.”

“You’re such an asshole. And you’re bloody brilliant.”

“I know. Get to the lab by noon and we’ll celebrate, ok? We’ll shoot Spice Girls lyrics to each other across the void. Listen though…” her voice changes then and Louis can’t really stand it, the way everything seems so serious all of a sudden. “This is really big, Louis. This is huge, ok? We’ve got to be ready for what comes next.”

The line goes dead then. Louis feels stunned. He can’t process any of it. He’s a mess of elation and embarrassment and exhaustion and manic energy. Zayn is still laughing. He sounds like Louis feels.

Louis lies back on the bed.

“Holy fuck.”

“You did it.”

“ _She_ did it.”

“You both did it.”

Zayn rolls over onto his side and looks down at Louis. His face is flushed and bright and he looks a little breathless. He traces the line of Louis’ arm with one finger and wrinkles his nose.

“Your tattoos are not better than mine.”

Louis shuts his eyes tight.

“God. Shut up. Don’t make it worse.”

“It’s ok. I thought you were a prick too, remember?”

Zayn leans down and kisses him. It’s soft and for once Louis lets it be soft. He’s too turned on his head to push for anything else. Zayn’s mouth is warm and his tongue gets more insistent, coaxing Louis to life and then they’re really kissing. Pressing their bodies against each other and breathing ragged and rough and it does feel like falling, maybe. Like the floor of the world has dropped out from under them. Louis is all adrenaline and nervous energy and need. Zayn runs his hand down Louis’ front and stops just over his hip, grips at the waistband of of his jeans and tugs Louis against him.

“How much time have we got?”

“Half hour maybe?”

Zayn nods. He bites his lip in concentration and works at Louis’ fly and then Zayn’s hand is on his cock. He breathes into Louis’ neck.

“We can celebrate a little, then. What did she mean? What comes next?”

Louis shakes his head. He rolls onto his back and stares up at the ceiling and he lets Zayn work his way down, moving his mouth over Louis’ chest. He tangles his fingers in Zayn’s hair and Zayn’s hand feels soft and solid and unbearably real, moving against him, and there’s so much. Academic papers. Publishing. Implementation on a large scale. Massive packets of information traversing a void in less than an instant. Niall going to space. Eleanor getting married to someone else. Winter ending. The twins getting older. Zayn getting lost in Louis. Louis getting older. New people. Old friends. London. What’s for dinner tonight. Zayn leaving. Zayn’s name next to Louis’ at the top of a paper. Niall and Harry admitting anything to each other. All of the things the future could be. Every possibility existing at once. It’s all too much to fathom. It’s all white noise.

“I don’t know.” Louis shuts his eyes. For the first time in like a thousand years he can’t imagine anything but this moment and this feeling and what’s happening right now. Zayn’s mouth, wrapped around him, warm and wet and brilliant. “Just…everything.”

**Author's Note:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH JAMIE. Thank you for reading through this whole thing and catching (most) of my typos. I'm sure there's still plenty of errors. They are my fault and my fault alone. You are the best.
> 
> I love Werner Herzog very much and I know little to nothing about Antarctica, so I riff pretty heavily on his documentary Encounters At the End of the World in this fic, as well as a documentary I watched specifically about wintering over at McMurdo and various accounts from people who've been there. This fic is kind of a mashup of those documentaries, the podcast I linked about entanglement, and my own complicated feelings about Zouis. I hope it works ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.


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